Associate Art Director, 3D Character Art - Unpublished R&D Product

Riot Games • Los Angeles, CA

70d

About The Position

Associate Art Directors at Riot oversee the quality and performance of their teams, with a focus on Mission, Direction, and Cohesion. In this role, your primary responsibility is to lead the Character Art efforts on a project, ensuring the team's deliverables meet the highest standards of artistic quality. You'll be accountable for building and maintaining a highly functional team, cultivating a strong culture, and supporting the performance, growth, and development of your direct reports. As the project moves from prototype through pre-production and into full production, you'll guide the character art discipline to deliver excellence at every stage. As the Associate Art Director, 3D Character Art, you will design and lead a world-class character art organization that brings the product's creative and gameplay goals to life. You'll define the team's vision and structure, driving the creation of compelling player characters, gear, and creatures that strike the right balance between visual excellence and gameplay clarity. By partnering closely with Art Direction, Design, Production, and Engineering, you'll ensure the character team's work elevates the overall player experience and scales effectively from prototype to live product. This role reports to the Art Director.

Requirements

• 10+ years of industry experience
• 4+ years of management experience
• Proven track record of leading multi-disciplinary art teams from concept through production
• Experience building successful character teams
• Experience working cross discipline to create production ready pipelines and standards from scratch
• Professional experience working in stylized art styles
• Experience working with modern stylized PBR workflows
• Experience working with modern game engines such as Unity, Unreal, or proprietary technologies
• Proficient skills in 3D/2D Software - Maya, 3DS Max, Substance.
• Experience creating characters for the FPS genre

Nice To Haves

• Experience working on a highly recognizable stylized game
• Experience working in pre-production for at least one game title
• Experience with hand-painted art styles and/or Illustration techniques
• Familiarity with the Valorant IP

Responsibilities

• Develop the character art style and aesthetic through in-game work, style guides, best practices and communication with the team.
• Lead and leverage the character team to high quality execution on the art style.
• Partner with recruiting to hire world-class artists to build a team that can scale to meet the development goals of the product.
• Create exemplary 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.
• Build outsourcing strategies and necessary documentation to ensure internal and external teams are set up for success.
• Partner with Design and Product teams to understand their goals and product needs, leading cross-discipline collaboration to create innovative character art solutions that elevate both gameplay and the overall player experience.
• Build and maintain a diverse, healthy, highly functional Character Art team that's strongly aligned with Riot Values, working quickly and effectively to resolve team health issues.
• Partner with Production to create the right amount of visibility into your team's deliverables and velocity.
• Be a great career mentor and coach for the artists on your team.

Benefits

• Open paid time off policy
• Flexible work schedules
• Medical, dental, and life insurance
• Parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children
• 401k with company match

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Industry: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees