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Lead Outsourcing Artist

About Splash Damage

At Splash Damage, we’re dedicated to crafting team-based multiplayer games that ignite friendships as much as they do healthy competition and teamwork.

Our teams celebrated the launch of Gears Tactics earlier this year, and we’re currently developing Outcasters for Stadia along with several unannounced titles.

As an UnrealEngine focused studio, we're excited to be transitioning our teams to the latest in UE5 technology and we're looking for skilled and passionate developers to help us drive this.

We're advocates for work-life balance and offer a comprehensive benefits package focused on the well-being of our staff and their families.

We believe that teams create the best work when they have a range of perspectives and experiences to draw from. Therefore we're committed to increasing diversity across our studio, fostering an inclusive environment to ensure everyone's voices are heard.

Due to the on-going COVID-19 outbreak, we're all currently working from home. We’re still looking to welcome new team members, who'll join us remotely until we return to the studio

The Role

The Lead Outsourcing Artist is responsible for maintaining the established quality and artistic consistency of all external art development, as set out by project art direction. Your focus will span across a number of art sub-disciplines including Character, Cinematics, Concept, Environment, Prop, Technical, Vehicle, and Weapons.

The role requires strong artistic skill complimented with a proficient ability in reviewing, providing feedback, and tracking of art delivery progress. You will be skilled in the creation of artwork, assist in the organisation and review process of external assets, and lastly, ensuring consistency between internal and external quality bars. Demonstrating an equal mix of artistic flare, direction, leadership, and communication skills.

As a Lead Outsourcing Artist, you also understand the various constraints during game development, including performance, memory and frame budgets, production schedules, and design requirements.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Art Director to understand and communicate the expectations for visual quality of in-game art with external teams.
• Align closely with the Lead Artist and Art Sub-Discipline Leads to keep quality and style consistent across all outsourced art.
• Coordinates with the internal art teams to facilitate the smooth movement of art assets between them and their external teams.
• Works alongside the Production and LT teams to ensure assets are delivered on time, and to the required aesthetic and technical quality level.
• Assist Art Sub-Discipline Leads with authoring of briefs, assets packs, and documentation for external teams.
• Work with game teams to set benchmarks for efficiency and end product quality.
• Maintaining good relationships between the internal and external teams.
• Handling briefing, tracking, and process.
• Ensuring strong communication of our game’s art style, needs, and quality expectation – both aesthetically and technically, to our external teams.
• Works with Art Director and Outsourcing Manager to identify, and schedule, assets for external development.
• Set up and document art pipelines, further develop best practices, and continually optimise workflows.
• Writes and/or oversees documentation and briefs for external teams.
• Works with the internal Concept team to ensure concepts are at the right level of quality/detail for briefing external teams.
• Works closely with art disciplines to ensure that assets are briefed in a timely manner to the external team.
• Organise and prepare asset packs for our external teams.
• Organise and prepare outsource assets for art reviews with the Art Director.
• Coordinate feedback between the internal art teams and external providers.
• Ensure art assets are made available to the internal art team members, and feedback is made available to the external art team members.
• Participates in project planning and maintains a clear and consistent schedule in conjunction with Production and Outsourcing Manager.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Experience as a professional artist or equivalent.
• Art leadership and management experience; ideally in an external capacity.
• Completed work on several published AAA titles.
• Proficient with standard industry tools like Maya, ZBrush, Substance Packages, Photoshop, and Perforce.
• Experience in:
  • Animation (facial, keyframe, and mocap)
  • Characters (modelling, texturing, rigging, and Skinning)
  • Environment/Vehicles/Weapons (modelling, texturing, and optimisation)
• Advanced understanding of high-to-low poly pipelines, PBR lighting/material authoring, and can set best practices to reduce visual issues/bugs.
• Solid understanding of game engine limitations; memory, GPU, and CPU performance.
• Excellent spoken, written and diagrammatic communication skills. Fully capable of explaining complex instructions to an external team.
• Ability to work with detailed concept art or reference art/materials when providing support to external teams.
• Thorough understanding of game art and creation processes; for example, high resolution sculpting, UV layout, texturing, and shaders.
• Capable in identify risks and issues within any asset creation pipeline (internal and external) and can proactively seek and implement solutions.
• Able to evaluate and assess assets from external teams against aesthetic, technical, and time budgets.
• Willingness to travel when necessary.

Splash Damage is an equal opportunity employer. We believe our teams create better work when they have a range of perspectives to draw from, and we are committed to creating an inclusive working environment that celebrates diversity.