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Art & Audio Outsource Manager

At Proletariat, we’re looking for someone who is excited about the opportunities that outsourcing can afford and has a strong sense of aesthetic as well as service - by taking ownership of art outsource you help free our creative leads, allowing them increased focus on the success of their respective internal teams.

Reporting to the Studio Art Manager, the Art Outsource Manager will collaborate directly with internal stakeholders: Art Director, Art Discipline Leads, Product/Production, and Finance to define, coordinate and manage Proletariat’s art, animation, audio outsourcing efforts. Working both with our offsite vendors, and individual freelancers, you will ensure quality, negotiate delivery schedules and contracts, gather and distribute feedback, track progress, while pro-actively seeking new partners and workflows to make our processes/practices even more efficient and effective.

You will assess current as well as forward looking development needs with above stakeholders to inform creative, scalable strategies for outsource and co-development w/ 3rd party vendors that improve quality, cost-effectiveness, velocity and risk mitigation of our aesthetic outsource pipeline.

Responsibilities

Ensure Quality

• Work closely with the Art Directors and Leads to understand aesthetic vision and communicate expectations for exceptional visual quality of in-game art with external talent.

Own Process & Feedback

• Art Brief Creation
• Organize and prepare asset packets/briefs for the external team, providing vendors with clear job descriptions and detailed specifications.
• Collect asset creation guidelines from lead artists to provide to outsourcers
• Develop best practice processes for review, feedback, and approval of delivered assets.
• Partner with Tech Art to test, improve and implement new systems that create a better workflow and increase efficiency for internal and external teams
• Act as a facilitator for feedback and communication between the lead artists and outsourcers as needed
• Be the first line of feedback to vendors - prescreen evaluation of outsourced assets on behalf of lead artists ensuring creation guidelines are being met, visual quality is upheld, tech specs adhered to and course-correct to appropriate direction.

Establish & Maintain Relationship

• Act as the primary Art Department contact for communication and coordination with external vendors.
• Establish new and enhance current outsource and co-development partnerships across our department to deliver concept art, characters, animation, UX, VFX, cinematics, props, SFX, marketing art and more
• Identify & Engage with new vendors, from initial contact to establishing tests/trial contracts for assessing long-term fit.
• Ensure vendors have what they need to provide us with successful deliveries.
• You will use both your extraordinary interpersonal and relationship skills to cultivate positive working relationships with our vendors.
• You will build meaningful and trusting external relationships through clear two-way communication and planning. Your approach will ensure sustainable production without compromising quality.

Control Cost

• Work with financial stakeholders and Studio Art Manager to find solutions within our art department budget and negotiate contracts accordingly.
• Create and maintain reasonable outsourcing budget plans/ cost estimates both short and long term that allow us to meet our product goals

Keep on track

• Work closely with production to ensure a timely turnaround on assets and deadlines are being met. Jira project & ticket creation, and monitoring to provide constantly updated visibility to the development team.
• Coordinate with the Production team to focus asset deliverables on the correct priorities and help the outsource vendors stay on track.
• Work with the art leads, designers, and production to develop and maintain the outsourcing production schedule.
• Partner with Production and Leads to plan milestones, provide estimates, manage risks and assign tasks, ensuring external generated work is completed on time
• Remove roadblocks that hinder partner progress and keep track of recurring issues and develop a systemic solution.

Coordinate Logistics

• Coordinate Outsource Producer, Development, Vendors and Legal in formulating MSA, NDA, and SOW`s
• Coordinate w/ Outsource Producer in management of contracts for existing and new vendors as well as reviewing and approving timecards/invoices
• Contribute to ensuring invoices are tracked and processed in an organized, timely fashion

Collaborate & Communicate

• Ownership of the good working relationship and lines of communication between internal art/dev and external art development resources.
• Manages flow of communication and relationships with external vendors, including wrangling training modules, style guides, tools, project documentation and onboarding/integrating into our process pipelines.
• Working with IT administrator to ensure vendor has access to all necessary software.
• Provide visibility and status updates to internal stakeholders through confluence/calendars/reports/jiras
• Track vendor delivery time, quality, roster changes and bandwidth
• Escalate in time and maintain close communication with vendors to avoid costly delays, miscommunications and other risks

Required Qualifications:

*MUST HAVE RECENT GAME DEV EXPERIENCE AND ART BACKGROUND*

• 5+ years of professional industry experience, including 2+ years of experience managing/maintaining art asset pipelines.
• Solid experience with managing outsource and/or co-dev relationships, ideally involving a variety of art disciplines.
• Ability to understand and negotiate art deliveries
• Basic understanding of 3D or a willingness to learn the pipeline and art requirements.
• Demonstrable competence in problem solving, with an ability to overcome any resistance, setbacks, and obstacles that may arise.
• Able to communicate effectively, both written and verbally, with a wide variety of people and skill sets both inside and outside of the development studio while maintaining a courteous and professional demeanor
• Proficient with developing schedules and setting milestones and associated deliverables.
• Proficient with project management software.
• Goal oriented and driven
• Ability to juggle multiple projects/multi-task
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; able to work on complex problems where analysis of situations requires an in-depth evaluation of various factors with minimal guidance.
• Ability to understand, match, and communicate varied target styles.
• Understand current standards of art in the game industry

Desired Qualifications:

• Professional experience creating and integrating art in a production environment
• Knowledge of Maya, Photoshop, Unreal and other industry standard software used for developing art assets.
• Advanced knowledge of Jira.
• Passion for developing and playing video games.
• Knowledge and ability to critique 3D Art, Animation and/or visual effects a plus
• Internal dev production or management experience is a big plus
• A vast network of established vendor relationships is a plus.