Character Artist (Contract Position)

OBJECTIVES OF THIS ROLE

We are in the process of staffing up our development team with outstanding talent to tackle a brand new sci-fi project using Unreal Engine 5. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who is tired of being a cog in a larger machine but would rather be directly responsible for crafting high-quality characters for the final game while working with a lean team.

To capture and preserve the essence of the games we all grew up with, we welcome applicants with unique skill sets and backgrounds. If you are passionate about making a meaningful contribution to some of the most significant games in the industry, we’d love to hear from you!

REPORT STRUCTURE

• This role reports directly to the Project Lead, Lead Artist and Producer while working closely with other artists.
• This role is responsible for liaising with Design, Engineering, Animation, Audio, and QA to integrate features smoothly across disciplines and to fulfill the shared vision of the project.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Create high-quality character models (hero characters, NPCs, creatures, etc.) across all phases: sculpting, retopology, UVs, baking, texturing, and in-engine setup.
• Maintain strong visual consistency with the project’s art direction, ensuring characters feel cohesive across the entire cast.
• Build clean, animation-friendly topology and silhouettes that support expressive motion and gameplay readability.
• Author textures, materials, and shader setups that balance visual fidelity with performance requirements.
• Collaborate with Tech Art and Animation to troubleshoot skinning, deformation, and character performance issues.
• Implement characters in-engine, ensuring proper scale, materials, and naming conventions.
• Be highly collaborative with other team members and willing to provide timely and constructive criticism to submissions from colleagues.
• Respond well to feedback and constructive criticism to their submissions and workflows and be willing to quickly iterate on assets and systems.
• Be self-motivated and highly adaptable to new workflows and processes while willing to learn new skills and insert into gaps within the team structure. We are looking for that “Indie dev” mindset.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Ego-free, highly motivated, action-oriented, curious learn-it-all with a growth mindset
• Comfort operating in ambiguous and unregimented environments
• Experience with hard-surface character elements (armor, robotics, cybernetics, etc.)
• Familiarity with rigging tools, skinning workflows, and ensuring meshes meet deformation, weighting, and technical constraints.
• Proven knowledge of character art pipelines: sculpting, retopology, UV unwrapping, baking, texturing, and material creation using tools like Blender, Zbrush, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer.
• Strong understanding of anatomy, form, proportion, and silhouette across humans, creatures, robotics and stylized/realistic hybrid styles.
• Shipped at least one AA+ title
• Eager to take ownership over individual characters or features and see them through to completion.
• Likes Sci-Fi and Horror media.

We are on the lookout for rockstars that are highly self-accountable. As this is a smaller team, there won’t be a lot of hand-holding as production begins to ramp up. If this kind of challenge excites you, we invite you to apply!