Lead Character Artist

Job Description

Housemarque, under Sony Interactive Entertainment, is seeking a Lead Character Artist to join their team in Helsinki, Finland. The Lead Character Artist will collaborate with the Technical Art Director to supervise the character art department, ensuring character quality aligns with the Art Director's visual standards. The role requires a strong background in high-end, real-time character art pipelines, technologies, and tools, along with excellent communication and people management skills.

Role involves:

• Planning and scoping character needs for each project.
• Defining and maintaining best practices and workflows for real-time photoreal character creation.
• Leading and mentoring the character art team.
• Balancing leadership tasks with hands-on content creation.
• Reviewing character work and providing feedback.
• Ensuring consistency in character style and quality.
• Collaborating with other departments to meet visual, gameplay, and technical needs.
• Managing character tasks, bugs, and priorities.
• Troubleshooting performance and deformation issues.
• Appraising performance and supporting career growth.
• Fostering a positive and inclusive work environment.

Requirements:

• Shipped at least one PC/Console title as a Lead Character Artist.
• 8+ years of experience in AAA game development (PC and/or console).
• Expert knowledge of character modeling, sculpting, texturing, and materials.
• Strong understanding of anatomy, proportion, and form.
• Deep familiarity with the Facial Action Coding System (FACS).
• Experience working with Lightstage photogrammetry data.
• Good understanding of real-time character pipelines and optimization techniques.
• Ability to optimize character assets for performance and memory budgets.
• Strong eye for aesthetics, silhouette, and design.
• Familiar with version control systems like Perforce.
• Experience with project management tools like Jira.
• Fluent written and verbal English skills.
• A genuine passion for video games.

What Housemarque offers:

• Competitive salary, benefits, healthcare, Nordic work-life balance
• Tailored immigration and relocation package to help you get settled into Finland
• State-of-the-art studio facilities in the heart of Helsinki
• Freedom, flexibility and openness in a collaborative culture
• Brilliant, diverse and empathetic colleagues to work with
• Exciting and ambitious projects executed with the best tools
• Access to PlayStation Studios collaboration, games and more!