Cinematic Art Director, AI Production

About the role

You set the look of a series through concept art and keyframes, then hold the quality bar as that look moves through AI video generation. You are the taste layer — the person who can say exactly why a shot feels flat (staging, lens, value structure, cut rhythm) and then fix it, by repainting a frame, reshaping the approach, or directing the generation differently. Senior, hands-on craft role. You'll direct, and you'll also make. Not a prompt-writing role.

What you'll do

• Develop environment and mood concept art that establishes each series' world, palette, and lighting language
• Produce keyframes and shot mood frames that give the production team an unambiguous visual target
• Partner closely with a narrative designer — story beats and visual language get built together, not handed off
• Review AI-generated video from internal and external teams; give precise notes on composition, blocking, lighting continuity, performance, and edit rhythm
• Get hands-on in generation and iteration, and hand-correct output where generative tools fall short
• Write down what "good" means: aesthetic standards, cinematic language guidelines, reference libraries
• Coach our internal AI content creators so quality compounds across projects

Qualifications

• Multiple years of professional experience in film/TV, game or animation cinematics, advertising, or an adjacent creative industry — shipped work, real deadlines, real stakeholders
• Real command of visual and audiovisual language: composition, staging, color and value, lighting, lens behavior, continuity, and how a cut carries emotion
• Strong traditional art fundamentals — you can draw and paint, and can hand-correct a generated image instead of rerolling and hoping
• Working fluency with generative image and video tools. We're tool-agnostic; we judge output, not software
• Range across visual styles, plus the judgment to know which style serves which story
• Experience art-directing or mentoring other artists — a meaningful part of this role is raising the team's bar, not only your own output
• Clear written communication and feedback other artists can act on
• Able to work autonomously across time zones with async review cycles

PREFERRED

• Vertical or short-form experience
• Custom pipeline work (node-based workflows, character consistency, fine-tuning)
• Cinematography, editing, or previs background
• Chinese-language ability (not required)

Compensation and terms

• Guaranteed base pay — $50–$100/hour. Set by experience and demonstrated ability, and paid for every hour you work regardless of how a title performs. Your rate moves up as your work proves out. This is your floor, not your ceiling.
• Upside on top of base — revenue share and breakout bonus. You receive a share of revenue on the titles you shape, plus an additional performance bonus when a title becomes a hit. This is added to your hourly pay, never in place of it.
• You keep your copyright. Narrative designers and artists retain copyright in the work they create — we take the license we need to produce and distribute it, and your creative output remains yours. This is unusual in this industry, and it's deliberate: we think the people who make the work should own it.
• Independent contractor agreement; hourly billing against agreed scope, invoiced on a set cycle.
• Shortlisted candidates are invited to a paid trial that mirrors the real job: pair with one of our narrative designers on an actual scene, set its visual direction, and work with the video team to push a finished clip as far as it can go. We pay for your time and give honest feedback either way.

Hiring process

• Apply through our careers page with your portfolio and resume — concept art and keyframes are what we most want to see.
• Apply: https://reelcraft.art/career