Outsource Manager - Art

Job Description

Outsource Mangaer, Art

Sony PlayStation Studios Visual Arts provides world-class content, development and services to PlayStation Studio development teams. Located primarily on our San Diego campus, the Visual Arts team works at the cutting edge of technology and partners with the industry's best minds and companies. This is your opportunity to work closely with game and film industry professionals from all over the world.

We are looking for a Manager of Outsource and Distributed Production who is highly proficient in all aspects of high-quality art supervision and management in the video game industry. You are an organized and diligent leader, strategic, and thoughtful in all interactions with the internal staff, external teams and partners. This role would also be a key contributor to the expansion of our new studio in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A dedicated, focused, self-motivated, and collaborative, and have significant experience in business development, outsourcing, bidding, scheduling, and milestone accountability in a wide variety of art disciplines: concept art, high-end 3d characters, environments, lighting/shaders, visual effects and cinematics.

This role will report to the Visual Arts Studio Director. The role will coordinate efforts and gather requirements from development teams, internal staff and vendors to execute the requested work. The Art Outsource Supervisor and Concept Art Supervisor will report up to this role. This role will orchestrate efforts and dependencies with the Production team and Art disciplines to achieve AAA quality results on-time and on-budget.

Responsibilities and Role Requirements:

Staffing:
• Retain and build upon the talented and efficient team that produces and maintains the highest possible quality and standards. Main advocate for the team.
• Partner with talent acquisition and Department Supervisors to interview, evaluate, acquire, and retain top talent. You will mentor artists of multiple disciplines and define recruiting goals for HR to maintain a balanced team.
• This is a people management position to ensure the team continues to grow and be supported professionally and personally.

Production:
• Excellent verbal, visual, and written communication skills. A balanced skillset between business development/strategy, technical knowledge, and people management.
• Support the creative vision of our clients and the internal Supervisors while collaborating with external clients, internal artists, and outsourcing partners while staying on schedule and budget.
• Document, communicate requirements, and provide leadership and guidance to artists.
• Significant Scheduling, Budgeting, and Outsourcing experience.
• Communicate and negotiate with partner teams about requirements, Request for Estimates (RFE), capacity, service alignments, etc.
• Work with the Supervisors and Production team to develop budgets for projects and department needs.
• Organize team requests for ongoing hardware and software to Studio Operations and Production.
• Continuously improving Art's technical and human competencies so the team can manage and deliver high fidelity deliverables to achieve AAA results.
• Collaborate strategic efforts with our new Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia studio and be the point-of-contact partner on the US side for this globally distributed effort.
• Deep exposure and working familiarity with Jira, Word, Excel, PowerPoint/Keynote, Perforce, Aspera, Shotgun, etc.

Management/Strategy:
• Develop and lead an overall strategy for Outsource; successfully execute initiatives that would improve and maintain the Art Department's efficiency, reduce talents' idle time through leadership in art business, service and talent development.
• Work with Supervisors and Production to identify and develop future art pipelines.
• Constantly and proactively seek to improve the production processes, tools and pipelines for art and service disciplines
• Guide plans for future Service Development to identify new areas of business, and lead internal business plans for new art services and pipelines.
• Guide cost and process optimization for outsourcing and R&D initiatives.
• Create polished presentations and proposals to effectively communicate art services to PlayStation Studios clients
• Maintain a visible industry presence in the computer graphics and game organizations, representing PlayStation Studios' interests with a high degree of professionalism. (ex. XDS and GDC)

Qualifications:
• 10+ years' experience in game or film production and have led or supervised teams on simultaneous, multiple projects.
• Experience with requirements for AAA game assets development and execution.
• Bachelor of Art, degree in business, or equivalent industry experience.
• Experience, skills, and knowledge to manage a team of artists and technical artists from three or more core disciplines: High fidelity 3D character development, environments, lighting & shaders, visual effects, and in-game & pre-rendered cinematics. Knowledge of the terminology and processes associated with these departments is a must.
• Understand the various art functions and dependencies within a game art pipeline, and how to organize and supervise artists to accomplish their assignments.
• Excellent understanding of how engineering and technical art work within the organization, and how to collaborate.
• Possess strong technical knowledge and experience in 3D computer graphics production.
• Understand production requirements for scheduling, communication, risk management.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d59060-3-141-31-209-42 in your application.