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Character Outsourcing Reviewer

Character Outsourcing Reviewer

Electronic Arts Inc. is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA delivers games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets.

Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication are what make Maxis tick as we prepare ourselves for massive amounts of growth and an incredible amount of fun. We want to engage our players and create the most entertaining titles in the world. Come and see for yourself, the future is here.

At Maxis we’re pushing the boundaries on every front, so you’ll get a chance to stretch beyond your comfort zone and have the ability to learn while you contribute. Our team culture is collaborative and high-performance oriented. We expect everyone to think like game makers and approach development with a Player First perspective.

The Outsourcing Character Review Artist is responsible for maintaining the overall visual style of any assigned project as well as coordinating and supervising the efforts of external vendors to achieve that look. The Outsourcing Character Review Artist will work directly with the outsourcing lead, Art Director, and other art leads to help drive the outsourced content creation on a wide variety of characters and clothing assets.

This artist will be integral to the success of our outsourcing efforts and will need to work in a fast paced development environment, while maintaining a productive relationship with external partners to provide high quality art with consistency and efficiency. The reviewer will need to collaborate closely with team leads, production, and other art disciplines to develop workflows and pipelines to get artwork prepared, reviewed, and integrated in game. The ideal candidate would have experience giving feedback and understands that most of their time will be spent working on character art reviews.

Major responsibilities include:

• Mentor the external art outsourcing team on a day-to-day basis
• Create highly detailed written reviews on daily content deliveries
• Work closely with the art and tech teams to ensure consistency between the concept, specifications, and final assets
• Work with multiple development disciplines, including non-art specific groups, to assess and improve creative and development pipelines and processes
• Establish and maintain the production requirements to enforce both technical and aesthetical coherence
• Finalize and/or produce assets both for in-game use and for visual target purposes
• Create outsourcing documentation and communicate requirements to outsourcing partners
• Monitor the quality & consistency of outsourced production
• Revise, change, or fix “finished” assets as needed
• Deliver to quality while maintaining desired schedules

Skills and Experience:

• 5+ years professional games development experience.
• At least 1 shipped title in the role of Character Artist on PC or major console platform.
• Strong sense of design and an ability to identify styles and trends relating to fashion/interior design and architecture.
• A solid knowledge base in art and design history.
• Experience creating documentation for art pipelines and workflow with external partners.
• Extensive knowledge and proficiency in Maya, Zbrush, and Photoshop
• Expertise with up to date art production techniques.
• Excellent artistic skills and experience sharing that knowledge through mentoring, critiques, and tutorials.
• Pro-actively seeks art direction and cooperation with other team members.
• Solid time management & communication skills.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, solid organization and efficient time management. Takes direction and seeks clarification when necessary.
• Self-motivated, able to collaborate with other game team leads in a deadline driven environment.