Senior Material Artist

Job Description

Cliffhanger Games is a newly formed Seattle Studio focusing on blockbuster action-adventure games and pioneering next-generation emergent storytelling beginning with Marvel's Black Panther. Join us to pursue your passion to build unique groundbreaking, and inclusive games that empower players to create incredible stories of heroic adventure. Become a foundational part of an ambitious, respectful, and diverse team as we are looking for a Senior Material Artist to join our team.

Reporting to the senior lighting director, you will establish and maintain the products shader and material quality with a focus on material surfacing for both the characters and environments we create. The senior material artist will work with art Directors, lighting artists, character artists, environment artists, tech artist, and graphics engineers in the development of our physically based materials pipeline including the creation of materials within an Unreal development environment and through the substance toolset. You have a love for the beauty and nuance of all things textural and how they add richness to our game environments, characters, and creatures. You have knowledge of materials from the natural world, are a student in the original construction of human made materials and objects and find yourself immersed in the possibility space of pattern languages on architecture and characters. You have an enthusiasm for ensuring cohesion of material construction within a PBR environment to maximize the final graphical quality within defined specifications. Additionally, you are on the cutting edge of material creation, photogrammetry, and enjoy working within the UE5 nanite environment as part of your process.

Responsibilities
• Work with the art directors, senior lighting director, graphics engineers, environment artists, character artists, and technical artists in the definition and maintenance of the physically based material development workflow and a base material library to ensure cohesion of material output at high quality and within specs.
• Through sculpt, scan or from scratch, create and integrate materials that represent the art and creative brand direction aspirations through textural expression that brings cultural depth and brilliance to our characters and worlds.
• Coordinate, create, and implement photogrammetry source assets with substance created materials for architecture and characters.
• Collaborate with art, technical art, and engineering team members to ensure material construction and rendering is efficient and performant.
• Document and evangelize the material development pipeline and asset library to ensure team clarity on best practices.
• Focus on continual learning, research and development of new approaches in the material generation space.
• Partner with senior lighting director, development directors, and art leadership on maintaining scope and priorities through the phases of development.

Required Qualifications
• Portfolio demonstrating several tiled and one-to-one materials created using both procedural and 3d sculpted techniques.
• Understanding of PBR standards and surface/light interactions.
• Expert knowledge in Substance Designer / Painter / or equivalent software.
• Experience sculpting and creating 3D environment assets and scenes.
• Experience working with, developing, and implementing photogrammetry materials.
• Experience with material generation and implementation into Unreal.
• 6+ years' experience as a material artist in the video game industry.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

The base salary ranges listed below are for the defined geographic market pay zones in these locations. If you reside outside of these locations, a recruiter will advise on the range and benefits for your specific location.

EA has listed the base salary ranges it in good faith expects to pay applicants for this role in the locations listed, as of the time of this posting. Pay offered will be determined based on numerous relevant business and candidate factors including, for example, education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, and business or organizational needs.

BASE SALARY RANGES
• California (depending on location e.g. Los Angeles vs. Sacramento):
º $113,300 - $171,700 USD Annually
• New York (depending on location e.g. Manhattan vs. Buffalo):
º $111,500 - $171,700 USD Annually
• Jersey City, NJ :
º $126,700 - $171,700 USD Annually
• Colorado (depending on location e.g. Denver vs. Colorado Springs):
º $111,500 - $144,000 USD Annually
• Washington (depending on location e.g. Seattle vs. Spokane):
º $111,500 - $157,300 USD Annually
• British Columbia (depending on location e.g. Vancouver vs. Victoria):
º $93,700 - $143,700 CAN Annually

Base salary is just one part of the overall compensation at EA. In the US, we offer a package of benefits including paid time off (3 weeks per year to start), 80 hours per year of sick time, 16 paid company holidays per year, 10 weeks paid time off to bond with baby, medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and 401(k) to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity. For British Columbia, we offer a package of benefits including vacation (3 weeks per year to start), 10 days per year of sick time, paid top-up to EI/QPIP benefits up to 100% of base salary when you welcome a new child (12 weeks for maternity, and 4 weeks for parental/adoption leave), extended health/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement plan to regular full-time employees. Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-ro0k52-3-144-100-31-42 in your application.