The Lead Character Artist should be able to successfully manage day-to-day art production of all artists on his team, provide clear guidance and instructions and promptly communicate information from Art Director or Art Producer to all team members; take all necessary initiatives in problem-solving and potential risks identification; follow production schedule and provide art deliveries on time and on quality.
The Lead Character Artist report to Art Director for Art Work and to Producer for scheduling, resource, and delivery issues. The Lead Character Artist will lead a sub-team in an art working group, and work with other sub-teams in order to guarantee the successful and smooth accomplishment of the project. In case of disagreement, they should try to resolve it through friendly discussion.
Responsibilities
- Review the client's package with Art Director to check if there are any problems with reference materials or requirements
- Ensure all artists understand the art requirements and specific needs of the project
- Cooperate with Art Director and Producer to composite the team and estimate the time for the project
- Analyze the client's brief and workflow document, propose optimization suggestions, and train the artists on the team
- Check daily work according to this schedule and notice Producer about the risks and propose solutions
- Perform daily checks of every artist's progress in order to find and eliminate any possible problems as soon as possible
- Prepare all assets for Art Director review either on his computer or on artists' computers when the artist finishes important WIP (working in process) stage, and conduct a basic quality control review before the Art Director reviews
- Ensure that the Artist knows the client's feedback perfectly and check whether the artist is able to implement the feedback
- Evaluate the art team performance
- Evaluate the ability of the artists and set the improvement target for them
- Communicate with Technical Art, explain the technical assistance requirements, and push the solution implementation
Qualifications
- Experience creating photorealistic set pieces, props, textures, and materials on next-gen PC/console platforms (character)
- A minimum of 4 years full-cycle console game experience in modeling, texturing, and shading character assets.
- Two or more published games in a Character Artist role.
- Ability to show examples of model and textures made for next-gen PC/console games
- Work well in a large team character, be proactive, and have excellent communication skills.
- Deep understanding of the complete game art development and production pipeline.
- Master level experience creating the assets conform to the PC/console game technical specifications with Autodesk Maya3DsMax or Blend
- Master level experience using Adobe Photoshop and Substance Toolsets to create photorealistic textures for next-gen materials based on concepts and/or photo reference.
- ZBrush experience for high-res sculpting and transferring to in-game assets.
- Deep understanding of next-gen materials and shaders and is able to achieve the desired surface qualities needed across a variety of character assets.
- Skilled at balancing art quality and performance in the game engine include and is not limited to the Unreal Engine, Unity Engine, and Cry Engine.
- A passion for making great games.
