Art Director - The Sims

Job Description

Locations: This is a fully remote position, available across most European locations.

Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims, we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don't settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be. Read on to see how you can join our team and dream big.

We are looking for a video game development Art Director to lead the visual experience of some of our future Sims 4 DLC. You'll guide a clear aesthetic vision and promote it across our internal and partner organizations. You will have a passion for what we do and the collaborative know-how to make dreams a reality. You will report into our European Senior Development Director and collaborate with our North American Art Directors.

Responsibilities:
• Sell each DLC's visual experience to partners both within and outside of our game development team.
• Build and promote the visual direction of the DLC and provide clarity to the art team where there is ambiguity.
• Collaborate with DLC leadership to deliver important results for high-level goals.
• Foster and inspire creativity that aligns to high-level, cross discipline goals within the DLC team.
• Author DLC theme guides and present high-level documentation.
• Provide constructive, actionable feedback to artists that aligns to vision of the project while helping hone each artists' skill sets.
• Grow artists to oversee high level goals and improve results, pipelines and processes.
• Help develop partnerships with external outsourcing partners to ensure quality, consistency and delivery.
• Collaborate with other DLC Art Directors to develop content that compliments existing DLC.
• Collaborate with Art Directors, Leads, Technical Art and Engineering to refine workflows.

Qualifications:
• 7+ years of experience in game development and at least one shipped title as an Art Director, or multiple as a Lead Artist.
• Experienced at establishing and pitching an art vision and guidelines
• Accomplished in leading and inspiring teams of artists and advocating for execution from pre-production, production and into an evolving live service
• An understanding of all aspects of contemporary 3D game development: concept art, character modeling, prop modeling, environment modeling, lighting, animation, visual effects and user interface design.
• Experienced in working with team partners to create content plans.
• Sense for visual storytelling, composition, lighting, form and palette.
• Deep, demonstrated experience with game development and game art.

Bonus:
• Experience in platforms that employ user generated content.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-ro55o6-3-137-183-14-42 in your application.