Lead Character Artist

Seeking a Lead Character Artist to own and drive the visual quality of facial characters for an ambitious interactive entertainment experience. This role is responsible for ensuring that character assets meet high standards of quality, consistency, and technical excellence while supporting the project's artistic vision.
The Lead Character Artist  will work closely with the Associate Art Director – Characters and cross-disciplinary teams to ensure seamless integration across animation, rigging, and gameplay systems. This role also includes leading and mentoring artists, contributing to pipeline development, and helping scale character production to meet project needs.

Responsibilities

• Translate art direction into high-quality character assets that support the project's visual and narrative goals.
• Lead and mentor a team of character artists while fostering collaboration, growth, and artistic excellence.
• Review and validate character assets to ensure they meet artistic, technical, and production standards.
• Create and oversee the development of high-quality character content, including anatomy, materials, clothing, accessories, grooming, and overall presentation.
• Partner closely with Animation, Design, Tech Art, Engineering, and Production teams to ensure successful implementation of character assets.
• Ensure character content integrates efficiently into gameplay and production pipelines.
• Establish and promote best practices for character creation within a modern real-time production environment.
• Identify opportunities to improve workflows, tools, and pipelines to support production scalability and efficiency.
• Collaborate with external partners and outsourcing teams when required to maintain quality and consistency.
• Support the definition and evolution of character art standards, documentation, and workflows across the project.
• Apply best practices within Unreal Engine 5, Metahuman pipelines and others.
• Identify and improve workflows to support scalability and production efficiency.