About The Position
NBCUniversal is building a large-scale, immersive interactive experience set within a modern world framework —and we’re looking for a Lead Character Artist to own and drive character quality at scale. This is a single posting covering three Lead Character Artist specializations: Lead Character Artist – Face, Lead Character Artist – Body & Crowd, Lead Character Artist – Hair & Wardrobe. Candidates may be strongest in one area, with working knowledge across others. You’ll partner closely with the Associate Art Director – Characters, Technical Art, Animation, and Design teams to deliver believable, inclusive, and performant characters across hero and large‑scale population systems.
Requirements
- A minimum of 7 years of experience in AAA game development experience, with extensive depth in character art
- Prior experience as a Lead on at least one shipped AAA title
- Proven people leadership and cross disciplinary collaboration
- Strong portfolio demonstrating realism, quality, and scalability
- Deep understanding of real time character pipelines
- Experience building modular, reusable character systems
- Excellent communication and leadership skills
- Desire to think and explore innovative solutions
- Positive experience working with outsourcing partners or distributed teams.
- Strong problem-solving mindset and ability to bridge creative and technical constraints.
- Must be legally authorized to work in Canada.
Nice To Haves
- Unreal Engine 5 production experience
- Procedural or systemic character workflows
- Experience working with outsourcing partners or large distributed teams
- Open world or large scale production experience
- Passion for inclusivity, realistic representation and believable populations
- modular characters, crowd workflows, Houdini/Mutable, population systems
- XGen, Houdini Groom, Metahuman, cloth simulation, layered clothing systems
- facial anatomy, blendshapes, Metahuman, facial rigs, performance capture
Responsibilities
- Translate art direction into high‑quality, real‑time character assets
- Lead, mentor, and review work from a team of character artists
- Own visual quality, consistency, and scalability across your specialty
- Partner with Tech Art, Animation and Design for seamless integration
- Build and evolve modular, scalable pipelines for large‑scale production
- Ensure assets meet performance, LOD, and runtime requirements
- Improve workflows and pipelines to support efficiency and growth
- Character body modeling, anatomy, and proportion systems
- Modular body variation and large‑scale population inclusivity
- Crowd systems, procedural character generation, and scalability
- Optimization, LODs, performance, and open‑world density
- Hair, grooming, clothing, and layered wardrobe systems
- Grooming pipelines, cloth simulation, and runtime stability on multiple platforms.
- Modular clothing and variation frameworks for large populations.
- Realistic fashion, materials, and character presentation.
- Facial modeling and likeness
- Modular facial systems and expressive realism
- Integration with facial rigs, animation, and performance capture
- UE5+ and Metahuman‑based facial pipelines
Benefits
- equal employment opportunities
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
