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Senior Character Artist

We build ground-breaking games and content for some of the world’s biggest publishers including Microsoft, Sony, Apple and Sega. Sumo Newcastle joined the Sumo Digital family in January of 2018. As a former CCP Games studio, we have a solid history of cutting-edge development, and now with Sumo, a spectacular future of ‘AAA’ game development for some of the biggest and best publishers in the world.

It’s an exciting time to be part of Sumo, winners of the Develop: Star Awards 2019 Best Studio and GI Biz 2020 Best Places to Work; big things are on the horizon and we want you to be part of our continued journey. Join us!

Sumo Newcastle is made up of a diverse mix of fantastic people, although sometimes, some groups are still under-represented. We are working to remove obstacles that can make it difficult for those groups to progress their careers in the games industry. We welcome applications from under-represented people in the gaming industry, including, but not limited to BAME, LGBQT+, women, people with physical disabilities, neurodiversity or mental health issues, and parents or carers.

Sumo Newcastle is looking for a highly talented and creative Senior Character Artist to join an experienced and passionate team currently working on an unannounced 3rd person multiplayer action title.

You will be at the core of the character art team helping to define the style and drive quality.

This is a unique opportunity for a self-motivated individual who wants to work as part of an experienced team within a highly creative and supportive environment.

Within this role you will:

• Transfer your high poly models into low poly models that adhere to required guidelines.
• Have a good knowledge of creating efficient meshes that are good for performance.
• Understand and be experienced in the baking pipeline in order to produce high quality in-game assets.
• Create well laid out, high quality textures suitable for both traditional and PBR pipelines.
• Keep up to date with modern processes in the character art pipeline.
• Create readable documentation for techniques and pipelines for the character production process.
• Be able to schedule your time and others in order to meet the project deadlines
• Have good organisational skills and produce workfiles that are easily used by others.
• Collaborate with the concept team by highlighting and providing solutions to any design problems before the modelling.
• Work closely with rigging and animation to ensure that your models work well in motion.
• Mentor other Character Artists and share your personal experience to improve our character production process.
• Work with the Character Artists and other disciplines on preproduction tasks.
• Help set the standard for model creation for the project.

We need you to have:

• Ability to produce excellent high polygon models in both traditional 3D and sculpting packages.
• Ability to work in a variety of styles.
• Ability to produce meshes that have a good structure and are suitable for animation.
• Good understanding of anatomy.
• Several years of applicable industry experience and at least one shipped title.
• Animated feature film character artists experience can be a substitution.
• Excellent knowledge of at least one major 3D package (Max or Maya preferred).
• Excellent knowledge of Photoshop or similar 2D program.
• Excellent knowledge of Mudbox or ZBrush.
• Experience with Substance Painter.
• Experience with shaders.
• Strong understanding of game development process.

We'd also ideally like you to have (although it's not a deal breaker):

• Game engine experience (UE4 preferred)
• Hard Surface modelling experience
• Technical art experience
• Shaders and material creation for engines
• Scripting
• High res marketing materials production
• Concept experience

Sumo Digital is one of the UK's most prolific game developers, enjoying over fifteen years of stability and growth. We have UK studios in Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, Leamington Spa, The Chinese Room in Brighton and Red Kite Games in Leeds, along with Sumo Video Games in Pune, India.

We offer a superb benefits package including generous holidays and flexi-time. We care about our people, with an emphasis on the work/life balance and out of office events such as our legendary annual Sumo ‘Big Day Out’, plus epic Christmas parties and much more! Our regular studio Game Jams are a highlight - winning concepts can go on to commercial release, so far including Snake Pass and the upcoming Spyder for Apple Arcade.

We are proud to be in the North-East of England in the Northern Design Centre on the Quayside next to the River Tyne, and will soon move into purpose-built, state-of-the-art facilities nearby. Newcastle was voted the number one place that travellers should visit in 2018 by Rough Guide and has everything that a major European city has to offer; culture, heritage, lively bars and fantastic retail. It is an exciting cosmopolitan city while also boasting plenty of beautiful outdoor space including several beaches less than an hour’s drive away.

Our environment is relaxed, friendly and built on every team member having the opportunity to shine and have real, meaningful input into the games that we create. We pride ourselves on our positive atmosphere and sociable team who regularly partake in shared interest groups, lunchtime and after-work clubs, and charity fundraising events.