Principal Environment Artist – Lead

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United Kingdom, +1 more country.

📋 Description

• Define and create exceptional immersive environments for Avakin Life.

• Convert creative briefs into AI-generated visual concepts that align with the creative vision.

• Develop production-ready 3D environments, encompassing interiors, exteriors, landmarks, and interactive spaces.

• Generate both hard-surface and organic 3D assets.

• Design and produce optimized textures and materials tailored for mobile platforms.

• Deliver lighting, basic environment animations, and visual effects.

• Optimize environments and assets for compatibility with supported mobile devices.

• Enhance and maintain existing environments through bug fixing, optimization, and refinement.

• Advocate for AI-assisted workflows throughout the environment art pipeline.

• Assess emerging AI technologies and contribute to the establishment of internal AI pipelines and standards.

• Mentor Environment Artists and Prop Artists.

• Lead brainstorming sessions, visual exploration, and workflow planning.

• Review assets and offer constructive criticism.

• Present work to the Art Director and guide implementation.

• Collaborate effectively with Designers, Technical Artists, Engineers, Producers, and QA teams.

• Manage external outsourcing partners and evaluate deliverables.

• Plan and supervise the production of environments and props.

• Break down tasks, estimate effort, identify dependencies, and prioritize work accordingly.

• Report on progress, risks, blockers, and delivery status.

• Identify, troubleshoot, and resolve technical and artistic challenges.

• Implement quality control measures to minimize defects and enhance asset stability.

⛳️ Requirements

• Expertise in 3D environment creation, including both hard surface and organic modeling.

• Strong grasp of color theory, composition, lighting, scale, and environmental storytelling.

• Exceptional skills in low-poly modeling and topology optimization.

• Advanced experience in UV mapping and texture creation.

• Solid understanding of mobile optimization techniques.

• Experience in creating lighting setups within Unity.

• Ability to produce simple environment animations and visual effects.

• Familiarity with AI tools for image generation, concept exploration, texture creation, material generation, and 3D asset creation.

• Comfortable utilizing proprietary tools, scripts, shaders, and internal production workflows.

• Capacity to work from briefs, mood boards, concept art, or AI-generated visual references.

• Proven ability to lead environment ideation and visual development from concept through to production.

• Experience mentoring artists and enhancing team capabilities.

• Strong communication and presentation abilities.

• Capability to provide constructive art critiques while maintaining consistent quality standards.

• Experience collaborating with Design, Technical Art, Engineering, Production, and QA teams.

• Experience managing relationships with external outsourcing vendors.

• Strong problem-solving aptitude.

• Experience in planning and overseeing the production of environments and props.

• Ability to estimate task complexity, effort, and production timelines.

• Understanding of game development production pipelines and milestone planning.

• Ability to adapt priorities as project requirements change.

• Clear communication regarding progress, blockers, dependencies, and risks.

• Strong understanding of asset validation, testing, and bug prevention strategies.

• Ability to efficiently identify and resolve technical issues.

• Excellent time management skills and the ability to meet production deadlines.

• Desirable: experience in shipping live service or mobile games.

• Desirable: experience with stylized game environments.

• Desirable: experience in developing or enhancing AI-assisted art pipelines.

• Desirable: knowledge of procedural content generation tools and workflows.

• Desirable: familiarity with Unity performance profiling and optimization techniques.

• Desirable: experience contributing to studio-wide art standards and documentation.

🏝️ Benefits

• Employee share scheme.

• Private Healthcare Plan.

• Pension Plan.

• Life Assurance.

• Work From Home options.

• Opportunities for Training & Development.

• Employee Assistance Programme.

• Occasional meetups for social interaction and strategic planning sessions.

• Benefits vary based on location and local legislation.