Character Art Director (Stylized Games | Mobile)

Accountabilities

• Define Character Art Direction: Establish and maintain a cohesive visual vision for stylized characters, ensuring consistency, originality, emotional appeal, and exceptional artistic quality across the game.

• Drive Character Design and Storytelling: Develop and refine distinctive characters through expressive silhouettes, appealing proportions, shape language, color relationships, facial expressions, and meaningful visual details.

• Translate Gameplay and Personality into Design: Ensure character designs communicate personality, motivations, emotions, and gameplay roles while remaining readable and recognizable at different camera distances and viewing angles.

• Contribute Hands-On Artistic Expertise: Create sketches, paintovers, design explorations, and visual references to communicate creative direction and demonstrate the desired quality standards.

• Oversee the Character Production Pipeline: Guide character development from early concepts through 3D production, materials, expressions, and final in-game presentation.

• Establish Quality Standards: Develop character design guidelines, artistic benchmarks, and visual references that help maintain a consistent identity across a diverse character roster.

• Review and Elevate Artwork: Provide detailed artistic feedback on concepts, models, materials, and presentations, identifying opportunities to improve character appeal and overall execution.

• Collaborate on Animation and Gameplay: Work with animators, designers, and technical artists to ensure character designs support expressive movement, believable acting, emotional storytelling, and gameplay requirements.

• Lead and Mentor Artists: Support character artists through constructive feedback, creative guidance, and mentorship, encouraging both artistic growth and high-quality output.

• Coordinate International Teams: Align artistic direction, feedback, and production priorities across distributed teams in Europe and the United States, communicating expectations through clear documentation and practical examples.

• Balance Creativity with Production Needs: Maintain ambitious artistic standards while accounting for technical constraints, production timelines, and implementation requirements.

• Take Ownership of Artistic Excellence: Proactively identify improvements and ensure the quality, consistency, and creative impact of character art throughout development.

Requirements:

• Professional Experience: At least 7 years of professional game art experience, including demonstrated experience as a Character Art Director, Art Director, or Character Art Lead.

• Commercial Game Production: Experience contributing to commercially released games and a strong understanding of the end-to-end game development process.

• Exceptional Portfolio: A compelling portfolio showcasing high-quality stylized character design, distinctive personalities, strong visual storytelling, and outstanding artistic judgment.

• Character Design Expertise: Deep understanding of character appeal, stylized anatomy, proportions, silhouette design, shape language, color theory, composition, and expressive visual details.

• Visual Storytelling Skills: Proven ability to create characters whose designs clearly communicate emotion, personality, identity, and intent.

• Artistic Judgment: A keen eye for detail and the ability to identify subtle design decisions that significantly improve character quality and memorability.

• End-to-End Production Knowledge: Experience guiding character art from initial concept through final in-game implementation, with an understanding of production workflows and technical considerations.

• Art Direction and Quality Management: Ability to establish artistic standards, maintain a cohesive visual identity, and guide the development of a varied character roster.

• Hands-On Artistic Skills: Proficiency in communicating creative direction through sketches, paintovers, visual explorations, and actionable artistic feedback.

• Leadership and Mentorship: Experience leading or mentoring artists, providing constructive feedback, and collaborating with multidisciplinary creative teams.

• Stylized Game Art Knowledge: Strong understanding of stylized character production and the relationship between character design, animation, technical implementation, and gameplay.

• Communication Skills: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with fluency in English and the ability to articulate creative direction clearly.

• Location and Collaboration: Based in Europe and comfortable working with international teams across different time zones.

• Mobile Game Development: Experience with Unity3D and mobile game development is an advantage.

• Additional Artistic Styles: Familiarity with pixel-inspired, simplified, or highly stylized visual aesthetics is beneficial.

• Character Variety: Experience directing both humanoid and non-human characters is a plus.

• Animation-Friendly Design: Strong understanding of facial expressions, character acting, and designing characters that support expressive animation.

• Production Documentation: Experience developing character art bibles, visual guidelines, and efficient production pipelines is desirable.

• Franchise and Original IP Experience: Experience developing characters for established franchises or original intellectual properties is an advantage.

• Co-Development Experience: Previous experience collaborating with external creative teams in a co-development environment is beneficial.

Benefits:

• Competitive Compensation: Salary and compensation package based on experience and location.

• Fully Remote Work: Flexibility to work remotely from within Europe.

• Creative Ownership: Significant influence over character identity, personality, artistic direction, and visual quality.

• Exciting Game Development: Opportunity to contribute to an unannounced game project and help shape its creative vision.

• International Collaboration: Work closely with experienced artists, animators, designers, and creative leaders across European and US studio hubs.

• Long-Term Opportunity: Full-time, long-term collaboration with opportunities for continued professional development.

• Annual Team Retreats: Opportunities to connect and collaborate with colleagues through annual team retreats.

• Supportive Creative Culture: Join a friendly, collaborative environment that values artistic excellence, creativity, and shared learning.