Studio: Seismic Squirrel
Job Opening: Videogame Art Director
Location: USA or Canada (Remote)
Type: Contract
Responsibilities:
- Champion the product’s aesthetic quality by providing clear direction and feedback to both internal and external artists and modelers.
- Manage and enforce our visual style, making sure that all art accurately represents the game’s lore.
- Advance the artistic direction of the project.
- Clearly communicate the artistic vision to the team and to project stakeholders to see the vision through to execution.
- Help foster and maintain the creative relationship between external talent and internal creative teams.
- Lead the look & feel and artistic development for the game, including directly contributing to art production when necessary.
- Mentor junior artists to foster their professional growth.
- Manage the art style guides and similar supporting documentation.
- Create written and visual feedback (e.g. red lines, paint overs) to guide the art team on quality, maintaining consistency with the style guide and the existing art library.
- Work with the production team to estimate timelines and schedules, setting goals for both short and long-term planning.
- Manage art team deliverables, ensuring they meet the defined objectives.
- Organize and manage art asset lists to ensure all deliverables are on time and accounted for.
- Work with the marketing team to ensure accurate brand representation.
Qualifications & Skills:
- 8+ years of experience in videogame development with at least one shipped game in an Art Director or Art Lead role through the full lifecycle of game development.
- Candidates should have experience with: Concept development, Visual Design, Prototyping, Content Creation Pipelines, Testing, Optimization, Scheduling, and Managing Deliverables.
- Possess a strong understanding of visual design principles.
- This role involves managing and troubleshooting the art production pipeline in Unity, therefore you must have excellent technical problem solving and a thorough understanding of Unity’s scene building, rendering, and post processing methods.
- Experienced with raster and vector art, 2D and 3D animation, rigging, and visual effects.
- Hands-on experience integrating art assets and troubleshooting art asset related issues in Unity.
- Can adapt quickly to change, seeking solutions which leverage work already done to mitigate disruptions to production.
- Demonstrates leadership skills through proactive problem solving and diplomacy.
- Strong self-discipline, a motivated, a self-starter with a drive for excellence.
- Organized and detail-oriented, yet able to work fast and loose when needed.
- Courteous and patient, able to give and receive constructive and inspirational feedback.
- Able to work effectively with people having a variety of personalities and backgrounds.
- Excellent problem-solving skills, resourceful, able to simplify complex problems.
- Adept at balancing and prioritizing tasks to meet deadlines, working within agreed timeframes and budgets.
- Skilled at working remotely using various collaboration tools.
- Possesses strong written, visual, and verbal English language communication and presentation skills.
- Passionate for the videogame industry and a desire to grow within it.
- Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Visio.
- Proficient in visual graphics tools (e.g. Adobe Photoshop) and 3D modeling tools (e.g. Blender, 3ds Max).
- Passionate to learn new tools and technologies.
- Authorized to work in the USA (US CFR ยง274a.12, Title 8). H-1B transfers and sponsorships are not available at this time.
Bonus Points
- Familiarity with building special effects in Unity.
- Familiarity with Adobe XD is a plus.
- Practical knowledge of UML is a plus.
