Art Lead, Characters

Description

SUMMARY OF POSITION
WB Games Inc. seeks an Art Lead. Characters for the WBG NetherRealm Development department. NetherRealm Studios seeks a Lead Artist responsible for ensuring the character team delivers best-in-class models that push artistic, creative, and technical innovation. This person will manage a group of highly skilled character artists, as well as work closely with the other Art Leads and Studio Art Director to help drive cohesive character art direction, and ensure the highest aesthetic quality across all NetherRealm's titles. The character lead should be passionate about evangelizing the overall vision to the team, and possess a constant drive to explore and advocate for new technologies and techniques.

• Work with the Art and Creative director to maintain and drive the artistic vision across all projects and platforms.
• Ensure all character assets are created to the highest possible standards and quality. Constantly push innovation to drive improvement.
• Work with the Character Art Team to make sure that all of their needs are represented to the rest of the studio, and any impeding roadblocks are identified and removed. The character lead will see the team's happiness and growth as an absolute priority, and supporting them should be second nature.
• Work closely with the Production Team to ensure that the game meets expected milestone dates, marketing requests, and press builds in a timely and stress-free fashion.
• Work with the studio's technical groups as an evangelist for new features and tools, and to ensure the character assets maintain proper technical and budgetary requirements.

• Guide and mentor the character team ensure the highest standards, as well as consistent quality, feedback, and direction for all work.
• Work with other leads and directors to identify issues, advocate for character team needs, and help lead the game's vision to fruition.
• Manages Review and Feedback for character related outsourcing efforts. Train and guide outsourcers to continuously push their technical and artistic abilities in terms of the character team's support needs.
• Project-specific research and development focused on new technology, tools, or pipeline improvements.
• Work with production to maintain up-to-date documentation and tracking via schedules.

• Preferred 4-year 2D/3D art degree with excellent fundamental art skills such as lighting, composition, scale, and color, as well as critique skills.
• At least 7 years of industry experience, and 2 shipped titles on the Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, or PS4.
• Art Lead/Team Manager experience on at least one completed game title or equivalent management experience.
• Strong knowledge of all technical aspects of asset creation, including high resolution and in-game modeling, rigging, cloth, and a full understanding of shaders and lighting models.
• Have a strong interest in learning future technologies as they relate to game and film digital character creation. Should be able to inform and excite the studio about new avenues to explore.
• Expertise with Maya, Z-brush/Mudbox, and Photoshop a must.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills. The lead needs to have a personality that is great to work with, but also the forthrightness to directly communicate with others and the confidence to discuss and defend the character's vision.
• Experience in dealing with Art content outsourcing, and a desire to grow outsourcers into partners on projects.
• Knowledge of Unreal Editor 3 is a big plus.
• A strong, inherent sense of vision not only for each individual character, but also how all characters in the game inter-relate and fit the game's vision. The lead should have the passion to create amazing characters in all styles without pushing for a specific preferred aesthetic vision.
• A knowledge and interest of all aspects of video game content creation. The lead will work with talented experts in all disciplines, and will know how to create characters to ensure everyone's work will shine and meet the game's vision.
• Calmness under pressure or within deadlines, and the desire to keep the team stress-free through any circumstances.
• The ability to work closely with concept artists and writers to help translate a character into an incredible on-screen presence. The ability to identify technical risks at the concept stage, with a desire to find innovative solutions for great ideas..
• A strong interest in video games is foundational. A desire to explore all games across all genres to continuously explore what is cutting-edge and aesthetically great.