Senior Character Artist

This is a hybrid/onsite position.

About the Role

For nearly 40 years, Naughty Dog has been crafting best-selling, critically acclaimed games that constantly push the boundaries of narrative, gameplay, and technology. The Character Art team is looking for a highly technical and artistic Senior Character Artist to join our team in creating the next generation of award-winning storytelling. We are looking for an artist who can help create characters, creatures, and develop pipelines that streamline and push boundaries to create compelling characters that fit seamlessly within the narrative-driven worlds we build.

By working alongside other departments and disciplines to inform, inspire, collaborate, and develop artistic solutions to technical obstacles, you’ll help ensure our character pipeline is at the forefront of AAA development.

Responsibilities

• Work with artists, technical artists, and engineers to design, implement, and maintain new workflows that will help streamline and enhance our tools, shaders, and processes.
• Use provided concept art and references to create highly detailed character and creature models.
• Create high poly models, UVs, in-game topology, and textures to ensure high-quality in-game characters that work within our technical constraints while also looking for areas to develop and push past our current boundaries.
• Monitor the needs of rigging, animation, and design to ensure clear characters in-game.
• Maintain a clear and consistent workflow under an established schedule.
• Work closely with FX and Lighting artists to create characters that meet artistic and technical requirements.
• Provide direction to character artists for aesthetic and technical considerations.
• Work closely with the Tool and Engine Team to develop new or improve upon old techniques to enhance character model quality.
• Work closely with Leads, Principals, and Directors to keep quality and style consistent across all characters.
• Help document new and existing pipelines to streamline processes for internal and external artists.
• Act as a power user to evaluate and demo new software and tools from 3rd party developers for the character pipeline.

Requirements

• Highly skilled at working with and defining standards for PBR materials, topology, and in-game character pipelines.
• Experience developing shaders with technical artists and programmers.
• Intermediate knowledge of Python scripting (a plus).
• Highly skilled at sculpting, modeling, texturing, and shading characters and assets for games.
• High-level knowledge of hair curve and card creation for next-gen games.
• Keen eye for form, lighting, colors, and composition.
• Very strong portfolio showing high-quality characters.
• At least 5 years of experience as a character artist, working on at least one AAA title.

Pay

The estimated base pay range for this role is $69.09—$86.35 USD per hour.

At SIE, working with our partners, we consider several factors when setting each role’s base pay range, including the competitive benchmarking data for the market and geographic location. Please note that the individual base pay range may vary based on job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this role is eligible for benefit offerings that include medical, dental, and vision.