We build ground-breaking games and content for some of the world’s biggest publishers including Microsoft, Sony, Apple and Sega. Sheffield is our largest studio and headquarters, situated just north-east of the city centre, where we’ve built and contributed to some of the world’s best-loved game franchises.

It’s an exciting time to be part of Sumo, winners of the Develop: Star Awards 2019 Best Studio and GI Biz 2020 Best Places to Work; big things are on the horizon and we want you to be part of our continued journey. Join us!

Sumo Sheffield is made up of a diverse mix of fantastic people, although sometimes, some groups are still under-represented. We are working to remove obstacles that can make it difficult for those groups to progress their careers in the games industry. We welcome applications from under-represented people in the gaming industry, including, but not limited to BAME, LGBQT+, women, people with physical disabilities, neurodiversity or mental health issues, and parents or carers.

The role @ Sumo

Sumo Sheffield is looking for a highly talented and creative Character Artist to join an experienced and passionate team working on multiple exciting AAA titles. The Character Team at Sumo Sheffield is centralised which means this role will be potentially working on numerous titles requiring Character Art work.

Due to our Central Team structure, we’re looking for someone who enjoys working on multiple projects and will happily embrace a wide range of style requirements.

Within this role you will:

Transfer your high poly models into low poly models that adhere to required guidelines.
Have a good knowledge of creating efficient meshes that are good for performance.
Understand and be experienced in the baking pipeline in order to produce high quality in-game assets.
Create well laid out, high quality textures suitable for both traditional and PBR pipelines.
Keep up to date with modern processes in the character art pipeline.
Create readable documentation for techniques and pipelines for the character production process.
Be able to schedule your time and others in order to meet the project deadlines
Have good organisational skills and produce work files that are easily used by others.
Collaborate with the concept team by highlighting and providing solutions to any design problems before the modelling.
Work closely with rigging and animation to ensure that your models work well in motion.
Work with the Lead Character Artist and other disciplines on preproduction tasks.
Help set the standard for model creation for the project.

We need you to have:

Be an exceptionally talented Character Artist with a keen artistic eye.
Have the ability and desire to work in a variety of styles.
Stay up to date with modern processes in the character art pipeline.
Be able to clearly document any workflows you are involved in developing.
Be able to schedule your time to meet project deadlines.
Work closely with the concept and rigging teams in order to bring characters to life in a practical way and to help identify and address any potential issues.
Be highly self-motivated, proactive and work well within a collaborative team environment.
Have a strong character focused portfolio that demonstrates your character creation workflow.
Able to demonstrate experience in each stage of the character creation process.
Experience of working with game engines, preferably Unreal Engine 4.
A good understanding of the game development process.

What We Offer:

We offer a super benefits package including generous holidays and flexible working hours. Further perks include our legendary annual Sumo Big Day Out, plus epic Christmas parties, money on your birthday, on site free gym and free fruit for everyone! Our new, regular studio Game Jams are a highlight - staff spend a full day developing and pitching their own game ideas for possible development by Sumo.

Our environment is relaxed, friendly and built upon the basis of every team member having the opportunity to shine and have a realisable input into the games we create. We are a very happy ship with lots of incredibly nice people that partake in shared interest groups, lunchtime clubs, charity fundraising events and lots of socialising.

We are proud to be located in Sheffield, just off J34 of the M1 offering easy road and rail access from Leeds, Manchester and the Midlands. Sheffield itself enjoys wealth of facilities including world class sporting facilities, stunning theatres and galleries, the National Video Game Museum, shopping, restaurants and incredible parks and green spaces - all on the doorstep of the beautiful Peak District National Park. We love it here.