Lead Character Artist, Games Studio (Blue)

We’re looking for a creative and highly-skilled Lead Character Artist to help us forge the creative vision on a brand-new AAA PC game. This is a unique opportunity to be at the heart of crafting, and bringing to life, characters for one of Netflix’s first generation of internally developed original games. 
As the Lead Character Artist, you will have a meaningful role to play in creating, shaping, and directing the models that come to life in our worlds. The right artist has a passion for crafting iconic characters while building, mentoring, and encouraging a team of artists. This role will involve leading all aspects of producing striking, high-quality, and optimized AAA characters. 
We're building the foundation for a small, but ambitious, team of creators whose primary goal is to create a game experience that our players want to repeatedly come back to; and as our Lead Character Artist, you will be able to create, ship, and run a game without any competing design constraints due to monetization.
Quality is something that we are immensely proud to be aiming for, and we are looking at putting the right team together to help take us forward. We’re looking for that group of leaders who are aligned with our core values, and care deeply about the experiences they create as well as the people they make them with.  Those who bias towards action and are energized by the learnings that come with bold experimentation at an agile pace. As a part of Netflix, we strive to hire the best and value integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration. 
Now is an amazing time to join Netflix as we seek to entertain the world. We have over 200 million paid members in over 190 countries, and we won’t stop there. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Be the artistic leader and take ownership of high-quality delivery, distinction, and style for our game characters.
• Maintain areas of the project’s style guide relating to the aesthetic and technical implementation of character assets.
• Develop the world/characters that are worthy of a Netflix film/TV series
• Implement initial game features within the game prototype in Unreal Engine focusing on rapid prototyping to quickly iterate to "find the look"
• Collaborating closely with the team to develop the concept into a prototype that builds conviction in the vision
• Work with the Animation, Technical Art, and Technology teams to define the character tools and pipeline, including establishing technical standards, and best methodologies.
• Improve hands-on delivery of quality character prototypes and benchmarks to a superb level of skill and ability.
• Proactively contribute to driving the department, and studio, to the forefront of pioneering Games development

REQUIREMENTS

• Minimum 10+ years of relevant experience with 5+ years of that experience in a Lead/Senior Artist role
• Has worked on at least one AAA title as a Team Lead, and has experience leading external art teams and outsource vendors (OS)
• Experience in defining and being responsible for the technical and budgetary requirements for character art production
• Display a mastery of anatomy, sculpting and texturing and advanced knowledge in organic and hard surface modeling
• Excellent knowledge of real-time modeling techniques (shaders, PBR, Normal, Displacement, etc)
• Solid knowledge of Unreal, Maya, Photoshop, Zbrush and Substance Painter
• You can arbitrate sensitively between creative desires and production requirements.
• Excellent foundations skills, including composition, design, and color theory and advanced knowledge of human and animal anatomy. 
• Ability to create models for a range of art directions, from photo-realistic to stylized. 
• Strong leadership and mentoring abilities and interpersonal skills. 
• Ability to find creative solutions for technically challenging tasks. 

NICE TO HAVES

• Character and prop concepting skills
• Willingness to receive directions and work closely with a team. 
• Experience with character rigging and blendshapes. 
• Experience with Epic's Unreal Engine
• Knowledge of rig creation and skinning
• Scripting experience in MaxScript Python or MEL
• Passion for gaming
• Strong portfolio that demonstrates a range of high-quality 3D art with examples of modeled, textured and lit character and a range of hard surface and organic models

At Netflix, we carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors to determine your personal top of market. We rely on market indicators to determine compensation and consider your specific job, skills, and experience to get it right. These considerations can cause your compensation to vary and will also be dependent on your location. 
The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically: $250,000 -