This job might no longer be available.
Lead Artist - SUMO LEAMINGTON SPA
4 years ago
Founded in early 2019, Sumo Leamington is the most recent member of the award-winning Sumo Digital family. We’re one of Sumo’s seven game development studios located across the UK and India, and we have an immediate goal of building an industry-leading team here in Royal Leamington Spa.
Managed by industry veterans with ground-breaking titles under their belts, the studio needs to hire the right colleagues to meet our exciting objectives. Whether you’re an industry veteran or straight out of university, we could have a career-defining role for you. If you want to create great games that people will play for years to come, and be there at the beginning of something we know will be truly special, join our team. We look forward to speaking with you!
It’s an exciting time to be part of Sumo , winners of the Develop: Star Awards 2019 Best Studio ; big things are on the horizon and we want you to be part of our continued journey. Join us!
Within this role you will:
- Lead a small team of artists with the autonomy to make your impact with our support to help make it happen.
- Work closely with the product owners, directors, design and engineer teams to establish the production pipeline and best practices for the game art development.
- Help build a successful and proactive team of artists by pushing the quality bar with seasoned artists to mentoring and helping junior staff with their first ever game.
- Create visual benchmark assets to help drive and steer the quality bar for the art team to follow and aspire too throughout the games development.
- Take ownership of the milestone planning, day-to-day feedback communications, and final quality of deliverables from various external partners.
- Assess and manage all staff members career progression by helping with training and mentoring by continuous appraisals and feedback.
- Explore, assemble and discuss visual material to define and improve the visual style and contents of the game.
- Support and document game assets, creation, specifications to ensure consistency with the entire art team (internal and external).
- Always thinking about how we can be better.
We need you to have:
- Previous mobile games development experience as a Senior or Lead Artist on at least two shipped titles or similar.
- A diverse portfolio of game art styles and directions from casual mobile assets to high-end renders.
- Talent for mobile-focused development to create low-polygon models and textures. An expert of all aspects of a variety of 3D packages (Maya preferred, 3DsMax, Modo etc) including Animation, Rigging and Skinning.
- Ability to create textures to achieve a variety of style including hand-painted, photorealism or vectors as well as imparting that knowledge to your teammates.
- A deep understanding of lighting, surfaces, shaders and visual effects.
- Expert in Unity game engine when used in a mobile environment and performance constraints of modern mobile devices. (Knowledge of Unreal UE4 engine a bonus).
- Excellent communication skills as a leader, collaborator and mentor with a proactive approach to collaboration and feedback from others.
- Excellent communication skills, never afraid to ask questions and to help teammates with answering their own.
As part of the Sumo Digital family, we’re able to offer a super benefits package including generous holidays and flexible working hours. Further perks include our legendary annual Sumo Big Day Out, plus epic Christmas parties, vouchers on your birthday and free fruit for everyone! Our new, regular studio Game Jams are a highlight - staff spend a full day developing and pitching their own game ideas for possible development by Sumo (this led to the recently released Snake Pass, so it’s a genuine commitment to allowing staff to pitch ideas upwards to the highest levels).
Our environment is relaxed, friendly and built upon the basis of every team member having the opportunity to shine and have a realisable input into the games we create. We’re in the amazing position of building a brand new team, and creating a studio culture that’s all about passion, respect, diversity, fun and togetherness. We’re looking for people that love what they do and love to share their enthusiasm with each other.
Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings.