Manager, Character Art

Job Description

Manager, Character Art - Unpublished R&D Product

As a Character Artist at Riot, you will bring worlds to life through your vision, craft, and leadership. You'll help define the next generation of character art style at Riot, build and guide a team of accomplished artists, and your work in sculpting, design, and texturing will stand as an example to the team.

As a Manager, 3D Character Art on our R&D team, you will build a healthy Character Art team to meet the goals of the project. You will create an artistic vision, organizing with Game Design, Production, Engineering, and Art to ensure that vision is compatible with the goals of the product. While working with Animation and Tech Art, you will help set standards for rigging, character creation, optimization and general source art workflows and pipelines. You will report to the Art Director.

Responsibilities:
• Define the character art style through in-game work, style guides, best practices and communication with the team. Lead the character team to high-quality execution on our art style.
• Create stylized art assets in a broad range, including humans, creatures, props and clothing, organics and hard-surface.
• Work with Concept Artists to establish the right process to fulfill your team's concept art needs.
• Understand and be ready to discuss approaches in style, ranging from proportions to hand painted, as well as technical and design constraints such as draw calls, poly counts, texture memory limits, modularity, and gameplay clarity.
• Work with Design to understand their goals and how Character Art can support them. Lead the collaborative process with Design and any other groups that require it.
• Build a diverse, healthy, functional Character Art team that's aligned with Riot Values.
• Partner with Production to create the right amount of visibility into your team's deliverables and velocity.
• Be a great career mentor for the artists on your team.

Required Qualifications:
• 5+ years of professional experience as a 3D Character Artist or Lead Character Artist
• 1+ years of professional experience in a management role
• Professional experience working in stylized art styles.
• Experience working cross discipline to create production ready pipelines and standards
• Experience working with modern game engines such as Unity, Unreal, or proprietary technologies
• Proficient skills in 3D/2D Software - Maya, 3DS Max, Substance.

Desired Qualifications:
• Experience in both PC and mobile games
• Experience with Substance Designer and PBR workflows
• Experience with hand-painted art styles or Illustration techniques
• 2+ years of management experience.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this is the role for you!
Our Perks:

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in gaming

(Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $155,600 USD - $217,400 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

(Bellevue only) Base salary range between $155,600 USD - $217,400 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

It's our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history (LAMC 189.00).

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-d9ebj9-18-221-129-145-42 in your application.