Job Digest: Find Your Calling with These 6 Vacancies

1. Character Artist at Frontier Developments

Frontier is an England-based, market-leading independent developer and publisher of videogames for PC and consoles. They are looking for a talented Character Artist to join the team and welcome applications from experienced candidates or graduates. As a company, they produce a wide spectrum of subject matter from stunningly photoreal to beautifully stylized, so populating their game worlds is always challenging and interesting. As a Character Artist, you will be building the cast for the next generation of Frontier games.

Responsibilities:

• Create high-fidelity in-game characters using Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, and Substance.
• Understand the character being created; their narrative, motivations, and gameplay potential and weave that into your work.
• Collaborate with fellow Character Artists to maintain the highest quality throughout development; on budget, on time, and in the style.

Essential Traits:

• A good team player with a willingness to work collaboratively, willingly taking on feedback and guidance from the rest of the team.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to work within an established art style.
• Exceptional level of high-polygon character modeling in ZBrush or Mudbox (ZBrush preferred).
• Extensive knowledge of 3D packages such as Maya, 3ds Max (Maya preferred).
• Proven ability across all aspects of character modeling, including anatomical, cloth, and hard-surface modeling.
• Excellent Photoshop and Substance Painter texturing skills, targeting physically based rendering.
• Familiarity with the entire real-time character creation pipeline: high-poly sculpting, retopology, UV mapping, texture baking, texture creation, setting up, and exporting to the game.
• Awareness of the importance of mesh topology, to ensure that character models deform well when animated.
• Experience with PBR and real-time engines.
• Understanding of best working practices in terms of LOD creation and optimization.
• Excellent communications skills

2. Technical Artist at BeamNG, Remote/Onsite

BeamNG, a Germany-based company is looking for an experienced Technical Artist who is passionate about the games, people, and willing to learn within their small indie game studio in order to support their ongoing and future development plans. You'll be expected to be the go-to person who can support their art and development teams and facilitate them to work with interdependencies and help reach their priorities. 

Responsibilities:

• First point of contact for technical implications in art-related topics
• Support content creators/artists with solving technical problems and workflow issues
• Improve inefficiencies in artist workflows through tools and documentation
• Define and monitor key metrics within art and development teams to understand core issues/problems, and identify/suggest ways to improve our processes
• Maintain seamless periodic communication and keep the art-development teams updated to avoid friction within the teams
• Identify blockers and produce quality work within the technical constraints of the project.
• Research and develop new technologies for enhancing the visual quality or solving artistic challenges

About you:

• Proven experience with a minimum of 3 years in art creation processes for game development
• Experience writing plugins/customizing 3D tools like Maya/3ds Max
• Experience in Substance Designer/Painter, Houdini, and procedural content creation
• Experience in working with scripting and programming (Python, C/C++, or Lua)
• Good experience in working with Jira and Confluence in setting priorities, best practices, track changes, and generate roadmaps
• Ability to work and collaborate in cross-functional teams with engineers, artists, and management teams
• Excellent communication skills in English, able to convey complex information in a clear and suitable manner to a diverse audience
• Ability to think critically, understand complexities, and support day-to-day workflow
• Ambitious and desire to learn, enjoy the fun challenges of a unique physics engine simulation game

3. Level Artist at TRACE studio

A Russian game art studio TRACE is looking for an experienced Level Artist who brings his vision, ideas, and experience into the full production cycle of environment and level art creation. TRACE studio creates art content for world-class video games. As experts in 3D, 2D, animation, and UI, they collaborate with Activision Blizzard, Sony, Deep Silver, Gaijin Entertainment, and others to develop a unique art for each game.

Requirements: 

• 1 year+ of game dev experience in a level artist role;
• Game engines hands-on experience (models integration, setting up materials, shaders);
• Understanding the principles of game-ready models optimization;
• Modular constructors/objects of high complexity creating experience;
• Planning, modeling, and texturing of environmental objects skills: both in the classic pipeline and using decals, trims, tile materials, masks, etc.;
• Working with references and concepts experience;
• Feedback-friendly attitude;
• Portfolio, showing skills of working on the environment objects and locations.

4. VFX Artist at Romero Games

Romero Games Ltd is looking for a full-time VFX Artist. Their growing team is looking for an individual with exceptional talent and passion for creating stunning visual effects. As an independent development studio, you can be part of a team where developers are able to have a significant impact and contribute on multiple levels to the games they make.

Responsibilities:

• Create and implement visual effects that are aesthetically beautiful and efficient for performance in Unity and Unreal
• Work directly with the art director to visualize effects that reflect the artistic direction of the game
• Work with design to ensure the visual effects convey gameplay information
• Collaborate with other artists and sound design to ensure that the visual effects complement the other aspects of the game
• Be proactive and self-motivated in exploring new opportunities for visual effects throughout the game
• Help influence further development of technology and artistic processes within the studio

Requirements & Skills:

• Strong technical knowledge of contemporary shader features and artistic abilities needed for making stunning visual effects
• Excellent visual understanding of form, timing, color, and composition and how those skills apply to visual effects
• Experience making optimized effects that work with standard engines and hardware
• Advanced problem-solving techniques needed to resolve the numerous hurdles that present themselves throughout the development
• The ability to take seek out problems and to work with other disciplines until the problem is solved
• Communication skills needed to give and receive constructive critiques
• An awareness of industry trends and technology related to visual effects 
• Image manipulation software i.e., Photoshop/Substance Designer
• 3- 5 years of experience and at least 1 shipped title

5. Studio Art Lead at Rebellion Development

Rebellion is a leading developer and publisher of games and is also one of Europe’s biggest independent studios operating across books, comics, TV, and film. They are looking for someone like you to become the all-new Studio Art Lead and join their passionate and talented Rebellion North team, where they are building on the years of success that Rebellion has enjoyed. The Studio Art Lead is a new role dedicated to balancing creative vision with production, to produce high-quality assets. You will have overall responsibility for all artwork and artists at the studio. You’ll also have ownership of the planning and structure of tasks and pipelines with efficiency.

Responsibilities:

• Overall responsibility for all artwork and artists at Rebellion North
• Hands-on contribution to the artwork
• Work closely with other development teams to overcome issues and produce the best game titles
• Plan and structure tasks and pipelines with efficiency
• Collaborate with Head of Studio, Head of Art, Designers, Programmers, and Producers to balance creative vision with production realities
• Produce high-quality assets in their entirety respecting as closely as possible the concept art
• Become familiar with game design documentation and assets lists to understand your responsibility to create credible assets for the story
• Verify the quality of objects in the game, and make improvements where necessary to fit technical constraints and artistic direction
• Keep up to date with game artwork trends and influences
• Be an active mentor and role model for the art team. Work to maintain morale and create an atmosphere of creativity and enthusiasm
• Inspire and motivate the art team to achieve their best, driving artistic quality by example and successful teamwork, giving feedback and direction where needed

Requirements:

• Expert knowledge of 3D software such as 3D Studio Max, Maya, and Blender
• Expert knowledge of 3D sculpting packages such as ZBrush or Mudbox
• Expert knowledge of Photoshop or Substance Painter
• Experience in working and implementing artwork to a game engine such as Unreal or Unity
• Expert knowledge of PRB material pipeline/substance
• Able to produce high-quality art assets in our game engine
• Easily able to translate concept and reference artwork into high-quality character models
• Expert knowledge of the video game development process
• Expert knowledge of production pipelines
• Extensive knowledge of best practice people management
• Broad business knowledge of the company structure, operations, and strategy

6. Game Designer, Competitive at Hypixel Studios, Remote

The Ireland-based company Hypixel Studios is looking for Game Designers to join their team. As a member of the game design team, you will be responsible for exploring how to best push the boundaries of that experience in order to build new and engaging moments for players. You will design and deliver competitive features around Combat, Progression, Player Ranking, and Matchmaking. You would report to the lead designer on the competitive team.

Responsibilities: 

• Work closely with design leadership to design and balance compelling combat experiences, with a particular focus on PvP
• Design new and innovative competitive and cooperative multiplayer game modes
• Develop competitive systems that motivate and reward players across sessions
• Collaborate with Tech, Art, Animation, and Audio to deliver world-class multiplayer gameplay
• Communicate your designs clearly to the team through design docs, user stories, wireframes, pictures of napkin sketches, etc.
• Develop a deep understanding of our diverse player base and their various needs and desires
• Use research and player feedback to validate that your designs are meeting the project’s goals

Essential traits:

• 2+ years of experience in professional game design on multiplayer titles
• Experience with designing combat content and systems, as well as multiplayer game modes
• Proficiency with goal-oriented design processes - able to balance product goals with design decisions
• Strong collaboration skills.  Ability to work with other designers, engineers, production, narrative, and art to provide the best holistic solutions
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills.  Can communicate the details of complex design structures and partner with multidisciplinary team members to deliver those elements to players