Studio: Seismic Squirrel LLC
Job Opening: Videogame Art and Creative Director
Location: Issaquah, Washington (Remote)
Type: Full-Time
Responsibilities:
- Oversee and advance the creative vision of the game according to its product vision.
- Clearly communicate the creative vision to the team and to project stakeholders to see the vision through to execution.
- Champion the product’s aesthetic quality by providing clear direction and feedback to both internal and external designers, writers, artists, modelers, and musicians.
- Manage and enforce our visual style, making sure that all art accurately represents the game’s lore and its historical basis.
- Help foster and maintain the creative relationship between external talent and internal creative teams.
- Manage the style guides for narrative, art, and sound and similar supporting documentation.
- Lead the look and feel and the artistic development for the game, including directly contributing to art creation as necessary.
- 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.
- Mentor junior artists to foster their professional growth.
- Design production-quality animatics for additional in-game storytelling.
- Manage art team deliverables, ensuring they meet the defined objectives.
- Organize and manage asset lists to ensure all deliverables are on time and accounted for.
- Work with the production team to estimate realistic timelines and schedules, setting goals for both short-term and long-term planning.
- Work with the marketing team to ensure accurate brand representation.
Qualifications & Skills:
- 8+ years of professional experience in videogame development with at least one shipped game as an Art Lead or Art Director or Narrative Director through the full lifecycle of game development.
- Candidates should have experience with: Concept development, Historical Research, Visual Design, Prototyping, Content Creation Pipelines, Testing, Optimization, Scheduling, and Managing Deliverables.
- Possess a strong understanding of visual design principles.
- Experienced with raster and vector art, 3D modeling and textures, rigging, animation, and visual effects.
- This role involves managing and troubleshooting the art production pipeline in Unity, so must have excellent technical skills and a thorough understanding of Unity’s scene building, rendering, and post processing methods.
- Hands-on experience integrating art assets and troubleshooting art related issues within Unity.
- Familiar with the art of storytelling and narrative structure.
- Shares our love for history and skilled in historical research.
- Can adapt quickly to change, seeking solutions which leverage work already done to mitigate disruptions to the production schedule.
- Demonstrates wise leadership skills through proactive problem solving and diplomacy.
- Strong self-discipline, 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.
- Possess 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, PowerPoint, 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.
- Located and authorized to work in the USA or Canada. H1B transfers and sponsorships are not available at this time.
