Senior Level Artist

Ghost Story Games•Massachusetts, USA, MA

8d•$90,200 - $133,520

About The Position

Ghost Story Games is seeking a talented Senior Level Artist to join us on Judas, the highly anticipated game led by Ken Levine (System Shock 2, BioShock series). Unique in its bold, creative vision, Judas is also built upon novel technology by which the visual world, gameplay, and story unfolds in meaningful, dynamic ways. The result is a significant and personal journey adapted to each player’s experience and offers a new approach to the art and storytelling of video games. For the Senior Level Artist role, you should be passionate about telling compelling stories through environmental art, all while thoughtfully crafting spaces and visuals with the needs of gameplay in mind. And you should be excited to immerse yourself in novel technical pipelines, and willing to embrace the opportunity to learn and grow in an all-new way of crafting games. With the unique technology unpinning Judas, it is particularly essential the Senior Level Artist fully leverages the world and storytelling systems. We both expect and welcome you to contribute creative and technical suggestions to elevate it further, and work closely together with Narrative, Design, and other Art counterparts, to bring the best vision of Judas to life. At Ghost Story Games we place the utmost importance on memorable, immersive visual storytelling, through all aspects of the game experience, and the close team collaboration necessary to realize a shared vision together. Join us and play a key role in Judas’ success!

Requirements

Established experience in the game industry as a mid-level to senior Level Artist, preferably with experience working with larger, complex productions.
Proficient art and technical experience within a real-time Game Engine (Unreal 4 is a plus).
Experienced eye for form, line, value, rhythm, composition, and crafting deliberate visual hierarchy reads (focus direction, small-medium-large shape balance, ‘80/20 rule’).
Familiarity with performance evaluation and optimization – working mindfully within metrics to maintain a smooth player experience.
Experience with effective team-based iteration techniques, including a thoughtful consideration of the bigger picture of the overall game experience and creative vision and a ‘order of operation’ and ‘ROI’ approach to iterative development.
Ability to learn and understand technical tools and systems so they can be pushed to the limit to create the most visually interesting spaces.
Proactive problem solver that enjoys cross-department collaboration, asks engaging questions, and can thoughtfully pitch both creative and visual ideas, as well as technical and process improvements to benefit the quality and efficiency of the project.
Experience and mindfulness towards both individual and team efficiency.
Proven ability to work on more challenging cross functional tasks of a higher degree of ambiguity, with a great degree of autonomy.
Knowing what questions to answer in what order, when you should seek advice and help from others, and when you can take the initiative to the benefit of the overall team and project.
Excitement and willingness to learn and master new technical processes and pipelines for level art creation.
Positive engagement that contributes to a supportive and collaborative studio culture.

Nice To Haves

Passion for deeply narrative driven games, particularly First Person Shooters.
Additional traditional art or architecture background
Experience working effectively and collaborative with a diverse mix of internal and distributed teams

Responsibilities

Prototype and execute on visually stunning environmental spaces that are both well attuned to the gameplay experience and tell bold, cohesive visual stories in support of the script and overall vision of world.
Collaborate with level design to support gameplay, keeping in mind things such as navigation, pacing, compositional sight lines, cover, verticality, and AI.
Serve as the key driver of all visual assets supporting spaces under your responsibility. This includes highly proactive and collaborative engagement with Art Leadership, Level and Narrative Design, Concept Art, and External Art Vendors to plan, prototype, and implement supporting assets, within an established pipeline and technical specifications.
Keep active tabs on the performance profile of all levels under your responsibility, ensuring visual content is authored efficiently and fits within established memory and performance budgets.
Work cross-functionally with other content disciplines to analyze the overall performance profile of spaces and strategize together on any balanced plans for optimization.
Support and mentor junior artists on the team.
Become a valuable resource that other artists and designers seek out for advice.