Job Description

Oculus Studios and Armature are searching for a Lead Character Artist who has experience in various art styles for bleeding edge VR/MR entertainment. You will create amazing iconic characters that stand out visually and engage players! To do this you will partner with creatives, tech leads, and production to define visual direction, creation pipelines, and schedule as you help establish the recipe for creating stunning characters for AAA experiences in VR.You are an experienced character modeler for games that has worked with multi-disciplinary art teams to achieve a consistent, cohesive visual style throughout development. You have a robust knowledge and skill-set across varied character pipelines and visual styles. As an artist you have expert experience creating humans, costumes, animals and imaginary creatures as well as hard edged props as they apply to gear. You are also a character pipeline expert with robust knowledge of all typical character authoring software and building techniques. Ultimately as Lead Character Artist you are responsible for creating iconic characters that people want to engage with. You will create clear guidelines for visual style and building techniques helping other artists. You should feel at home building and leading a team with experience recruiting, nurturing/guiding other artists through both mentorship and critique. You also partner well with other disciplines as you represent the character department in planning and strategizing to create the best game possible.

Lead Character Artist Responsibilities:

• Create highly detailed characters, creatures, and props that are accurate to concept art and run at desired performance specifications in Unreal
• Work with the Creative Director to define and drive the visual style for characters overseeing implementation on a daily basis from internal artists and external teams
• Work with Concept Art, and Tech Art and Production to prove out and establish visual guides for characters for internal and external art teams to work from
• Translate concept art and design ideas into optimized, efficient, and polished 3D models
• Clearly communicate updates and concerns with team members and lead artists
• Participate in research and development of the latest tools, shaders, technology, and workflows
• Contribute to building internal community by encouraging artistic development, showcasing workflows, artistic techniques, providing quality feedback, and mentoring others

Minimum Qualifications:

• Experience shipping at least one AAA title as an a Senior Character Artist
• 5+ years industry experience as a Character Artist or 3D Artist
• A portfolio that demonstrates characters in a variety of styles ranging from realistic to stylized
• Expert knowledge of Maya, Photoshop, Substance, and ZBrush (or highpoly authoring equivalents)
• Experience creating organic as well as hard surface models
• Experience creating low-poly models with proper edge flow for optimal deformation and animation
• Understanding and practical application of principles of anatomy, scale, proportion, silhouette, and color theory as it applies to characters
• 5+ years experience implementing 3D work into unreal or other game engines
• Experience with current game-art pipelines and methodologies

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with outsourcing teams on a large scale project
• Experience creating art for VR/AR
• Experience figure drawing, sculpting, and other traditional fine art skills
• Experience modeling for FACS
• Experience creating key art or compositions using a variety of software

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