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Character Outsource Artist

Crystal Dynamics, a part of the Square Enix family and the studio behind Marvel’s Avengers and the award-winning Tomb Raider game franchise, is constantly on the hunt to add even more top-tier gaming talent to our family. We pride ourselves on attracting and developing the best talent available to contribute to the most exciting projects in gaming today. Our 25-plus years of game development experience has established us as one of the premier studios in the world.

Benefits for this full-time position include a competitive salary, 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance options and plenty of days of paid time-off.

Position Summary

The Character Outsource Artist will have artistic experience in modeling, texturing and will be able to leverage past experiences towards guiding the creation of realistic characters for our future AAA experiences. They will team with the Art Director and Character Lead to maintain the art quality bar for the project and work with our external development partners to meet and exceed it.

Crystal Dynamics is looking for a Character Outsource Artist who has an analytical nature, understands art direction, and can communicate complex ideas both visually and in writing. While this position is not focused on content creation, the artist will have a broad impact on Crystal Dynamics products and be hands-on with a scope of work that often exceeds other artist roles. The ideal artist for this role has a firm understanding of the industry-leading creation techniques. The artist should be able to produce content at a high-level (hands on, as needed) as well as train others on how to use our proprietary tools.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Work with the Art Director and Character Lead to maintain and deliver against the established art quality bar for our game projects
• Provide written feedback, redlines and visual direction to external partners on character related assets
• Create detailed documentation, reference, and examples to facilitate the creation of quality deliveries
• Collaborate with internal teams to polish assets and provide modeling/materials examples as needed to unblock vendors.
• Coordinate with production team to track asset creation progress and delivery schedule

Essential Requirements

• Proven experience in a professional capacity as a character artist; experience shown within a portfolio that demonstrates current-gen 3D art techniques in a realistic style
• Desire to work with external vendors and ability to provide critical feedback to uphold vendor quality of work
• Understanding current-gen techniques such as PBR rendering and able to demonstrate talent for creating character art through examples within packages such as Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop, Substance Designer, Substance Painter
• Strong understanding of realistic cloth, hard-surface, organic asset creation
• Highly organized, self-motivated with demonstrated ability to work efficiently and independently
• Strong attention to detail and visual analytical skills to compare and contrast proposed and returned work from vendors
• Strong time management skills with a proven ability to focus on priorities and solve problems in a timely manner
• Great collaborative skills and the ability to encourage growth/development with internal and external teams
• Ability to meet deadlines in a fast-paced, team focused environment

Bonus

• Previous experience working with external vendors a plus
• Experience creating characters specifically for games

Crystal Dynamics is an EOE and M/F/D/V employer