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Lead VFX Artist - Permanent

OVERVIEW

At PlayStation London Studio, we are on a mission to make award-winning, landmark games. Our upcoming PlayStation 5 online multiplayer game will be focused on a brand-new IP we are extraordinarily excited about.

Our new game is close to our hearts, as the whole team collaborated on coming up with the concept from the very beginning. We’ve seen this idea grow from a seed, and now we’re looking for new starters to continue our journey on shaping our plans for this AAA project.

We’re also a part of the PlayStation Studios family, a collective of teams - from Insomniac to Naughty Dog and many more. As such, we have solid support system – often knowledge sharing industry advancements so that all our studios, individually lead the way to create memorable gaming experiences.

About Role

We are looking for a highly skilled Lead VFX Artist to join our growing team. Working with our ground breaking proprietary technology and joining forces across our Art, Design and Engineering teams we fully empower our artists to build compelling, visually spectacular effects. This is certainly true in our new and exciting AAA title were VFX plays a major role in the player experience. Our VFX teams are fundamental to bringing our game to life, bridging creative, technical and design fields they marry together art and science to allow us to deliver on pushing the boundaries of gameplay, art, and our ground-breaking proprietary technologies.

This is a unique opportunity to be at the heart of crafting and bringing to life the next landmark PlayStation IP. You will have a meaningful role to play in creating, shaping, and directing the visual effects that excite millions and bring our worlds to life. The right artist has a passion for the craft, whilst building, mentoring, and managing a team of artists. This role will involve directing all aspects of producing striking high quality and optimised visual effects.

Scope of Work

• Accountable for delivery of high quality and performant VFX across our projects, to time and budget.
• Responsible for maintaining Art Direction and Quality for all the artists on our projects, and our team’s and partner’s ability to implement and achieve that quality bar with clear, concise guidance and feedback.
• You will be responsible for the VFX Art production schedule. Ensuring our scope, schedule, and approach are scalable and flexible. Supervising and communicating project progress in your area.
• You will lead, mentor, and develop a specialised team. Handling their personal, and career growth.
• You are accountable for building a long-term strategy for your area, ensuring your team is aligned and feeding into the overall strategies.
• Drive regular and frequent review processes, including setting up reviews for Art Leadership, and wider decision makers.
• Develop and maintain efficient production processes for VFX art. Continually optimize workflows, identify, and mitigate risks, and supervise implementation of solutions.
• Participate in setting wider Art department strategy, processes, best practises, and goals crafted to improve our teams year over year as a member of the department's management group.
• Be directly involved in vendor relationships, ensuring stable long term mutually beneficial partnerships for our teams.

Essential Knowledge & Skills

• Prior experience leading delivery of high-performance, high-quality VFX for AAA titles.
• Ability to recognise quality, with a proficiency in using visual language to support exciting player experiences and gameplay moments
• Demonstrate a proven command of timing, weight, realism, colour, volume, energy, particle aesthetics and/or animation principles
• Expert understanding of 3D packages (for example Maya, Max or Houdini)
• Professional experience with node-based particle systems and geometry based visual effects.
• Experience with realtime shaders
• Knowledge of game engine limitations; memory, GPU, and CPU performance
• Ability to work closely across the team, as well as independently, and be able to drive initiatives through to completion.

Desirable Knowledge & Skills

• Ability to build assets needed for particle effects and level atmospherics.
• Experience with Houdini
• Proprietary engines and tools
• Profiling VFX performance with in-engine tools
• Fluid, soft or rigid body simulations
• Understand scripting and coding principles

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We encourage you to bring your best-unaltered self to work. Inclusivity is one of our studio values, which means we embrace different perspectives to fuel our creativity and we know that our games are stronger for it!

It is important to us that our teams are passionate about diversity and inclusion. They must understand that these words speak to people’s lived experiences that may differ to their own. We encourage our teams to educate themselves and show support and their commitment to DE&I (diversity, equity, and inclusion). As an example, some of our outreach activities include giving talks, mentoring, speaking at schools, running roundtables and much more.

We therefore welcome applications from all groups who are underrepresented in the games industry. We can offer training to upskill our team, so if you don’t feel you meet 100% of the job criteria, we still strongly encourage you to apply and look forward to hearing from you.

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Our roles can be flexible in terms of work location in the UK. We will consider the individual’s preference for hybrid, remote or onsite working. We may be able to support remote working from a selection of other countries depending on location and the role you're applying to, so please reach out to see if that could be a possibility. If you wish to relocate to the UK and require sponsorship, we can support you with the visa process.

We have so many benefits, and we felt that if we listed them all out here it might look like we are bragging! What we can say is that we have you covered, from health and wellbeing, to finance and personal development, there is something there for everyone! If you would like to know more head to our benefits and perks page!