Job Description
As a Principal Character Artist at Riot, you will bring champions to life by creating and texturing high and low poly models. You will help craft some of the most iconic characters in the world of gaming. Your sculpting skills, artistic eye and experience with anatomy, form, and color will lead the way in character creation. Working within both technical and design constraints, you will use your knowledge of proportions, anatomy and readability to ensure models are optimized in game. Your craft expertise, high-level execution and attention to detail will enrich the player's immersive experience.
As a Principal Character Artist in the Research & Development team you will be a founding member of a new game team in the early stages of development, and you'll report directly to the Art Director. You'll be a T-Shaped game developer whose depth of expertise is in character art but are also excited to contribute to all aspects of game production, including rough environment models and boxes.
Responsibilities:
• Create 3D assets ranging from humanoid to creatures.
• Understand game requirements to create low poly assets that are optimized for deformation and animation.
• Work with materials/shaders from hand painted diffuse to PBR workflows.
• Interpret concept designs while taking into account technical and design constraints such as poly counts, texture memory limits, and topology.
• Use your sense of human/creature anatomy to push character quality to its fullest potential.
• Work in an always evolving R&D development environment.
• Lead the effort in pushing Character Art quality and style for the game.
Required Qualifications:
• 8+ years of character modeling experience
• Exceptional 3D Character Art craft ability with strong artistic eye and taste for design, anatomy, proportion, stylization, color, and texture.
• Experience in assessing and recommending tools and pipelines for projects early in development.
• Ability to define new world class art styles through your work.
• Demonstrated ability to work on high quality stylized character art in a broad range of styles and aesthetics with personal or professional samples
• Experience working with modeling, sculpting, and texturing programs such as Maya, Zbrush, Substance, and Photoshop
Desired Qualifications:
• Substantial direct experience in the prototype/early stages of a game
• Experience working with game engine middleware solutions
When submitting your application, please provide a portfolio of your high-quality character art - including stylized artwork
For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this could be 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
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-gm50p2-3-236-139-73-42 in your application.