3D Character Art Lead - Unannounced R&D Product

Job Description

As a Lead Character Artist at Riot, you will bring worlds to life through your vision, craft, and leadership. You'll help define the next generation of character art style at Riot, build and guide a team of talented artists, and your work in sculpting, design, and texturing will stand as an example to the team. Beyond art, you will be accountable for your team's artistic quality, performance, and growth.
As a 3D Character Art Lead on the Research & Development team, you'll be responsible for building and leading a strong Character Art team to support the project's goals. Your role includes defining and executing the artistic vision while collaborating with Game Design, Production, Engineering, and Art to ensure alignment with the overall product objectives. You'll report directly to the Art Director.

Responsibilities:
• Define the character art style through in-game work, style guides, best practices and communication with the team. Lead and empower the character team to high quality execution on the art style.
• Create exemplary stylized art assets in a broad range, including humans, creatures, weapons and armor, organics and hard-surface.
• Work with concept artists to establish the right process to fulfill your team's concept art needs.
• Understand and be ready to discuss approaches in style, ranging from proportions to hand painted and PBR workflows, as well as technical and design constraints such as draw calls, poly counts, texture memory limits, modularity, and gameplay clarity.
• Work with design to understand their goals and how character art can support them. Lead the collaborative process with design and any other groups that require it.
• Build and maintain a diverse, healthy, highly performing character art team that's strongly aligned with Riot Values, working quickly and effectively to resolve team health issues.
• Partner with production to create the right amount of visibility into your team's deliverables and velocity.
• Be a great career mentor and coach for the artists on your team.
Required Qualifications:
• 5+ years of professional experience as a Lead Character Artist or Principal Character Artist
• Professional experience working in stylized art styles
• Experience working with modern game engines such as Unreal, Unity, or proprietary technologies
• Proficient skills in 3D/2D Software - Maya, 3DS Max, Substance
• Professional experience working in Unreal
Desired Qualifications:
• Strong understanding of Substance Designer and PBR workflows
• 2+ years of management experience
• Original IP development experience
• Early game development experience
When submitting your application, please provide a portfolio of your high-quality character art - including stylized artwork. And as a part of the application process, you may also be asked to complete an art test.
For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this could be your role!

• (Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $166,600.00 - $232,800.00 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.
• (Mercer Island only) Base salary range between $166,600.00 - $232,800.00 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-6kqnnn-18-220-248-77-42 in your application.