Art Director

Company Description

Smoking Gun Interactive, a Keywords Studio, is an industry-leading game development studio founded in 2007 by award-winning industry veterans. SGI is fearless in creating IP and boldly partners with renowned brands to develop a wide range of world-class, immersive titles and interactive experiences that resonate with strategy gamers worldwide and entertain millions of casual players every day.

Job Overview

As an Art Director with Smoking Gun Interactive (SGI), you are a talented and passionate natural leader with a proven track record of setting the artistic direction and delivering compelling, cohesive visuals that enhance gameplay and user experience. You exhibit an outstanding level of creativity and proficiency in problem-solving both artistic and technical challenges. You have exceptional people management skills you utilize as the direct manager of Lead Artists to ensure a positive culture among the art teams and their projects. You are a flexible, collaborative individual with excellent communication skills and a passion for games who will work with all departments to complete a project.

This is a permanent full-time position based in our Downtown Vancouver office. Candidates must be currently located or willing relocate to the Greater Vancouver Area with the expectation to be able to come into the office as needed and eligible to work in Canada.

Requirements

In this role, you will:

• Develop, communicate and champion the artistic direction for new and existing projects across a variety of genres and audiences
• Participate in project pitches including art direction, scoping, estimating levels of effort, art budgeting, staffing needs and client communication
• Collaborate with Senior Management to deliver and drive a cohesive art style for the projects.
• Work with production to ensure the art direction is achievable within the project constraints.
• Directly manage artists of all levels, including performance evaluations, mentoring and team leadership
• Actively participate in recruitment: resume and portfolio evaluations, tests, interviews and hiring decisions
• Lead the art team for a product and produce assets as needed.
• Establish art production pipelines, and ensuring the maintenance of the workflow of artistic assets and tasks
• Work with discipline heads and leads to provide feedback and ensure consistency of the art direction among all aspects of design, art, audio, narrative, UI/UX and marketing
• Be a main conduit of art discussions between the clients and SGI.
• Supervise and approve work completed by art teams to ensure that deliverables are consistent with the art direction, design, quality standards and timelines

To be successful in this role, you must have:

• 8+ years of experience as an art director, senior concept artist, or lead artist on console/PC and mobile projects
• Expert level knowledge of technical skills: concept art, illustration, marketing art, UI and UX design, high/low poly 3D sculpting and modelling
• Demonstrable mastery of art fundamentals: lighting, form, anatomy, composition, colour, animation and layout in both 2D and 3D with versatility regarding environments, characters, VFX, graphics design and UI elements
• Expertise with 3D and 2D current-gen production tools (knowledge of rendering engines and compositing is an asset)
• Technical expertise with the main graphics engines on the market (knowledge of iOS and Android platforms is an asset)
• Strong experience in team workflow planning and organization, and ability to delegate tasks and responsibilities within your team
• Shipped game titles in various genres and platforms
• Exceptional attention to detail
• Possess a positive track record in terms of developing, mentoring, and managing multidisciplinary graphics teams
• Excellent knowledge/reasoning when it comes to game development and the realities of production, both from technical and conceptual standpoints
• Tactful and strong communicator, able to mobilize and inspire a team
• Critical with a keen sense of observation, and able to express ideas effectively with different departments and stakeholders
• Independent, rigorous and equipped with excellent organizational skills
• Passion for games and interactive entertainment with desire to advance games as an art form

Benefits

• 10 days vacation leave
• 5 paid days personal leave
• 7 paid sick days
• 5 paid parental leave days
• Life Insurance & Accidental Death & Dismemberment
• Dependent Life Insurance
• Long Term Disability (LTD)
• Extended Healthcare Benefit
• Dental Care
• RRSP matching
• Hybrid working
• Training & Development

Salary Range: $110,000 - $150,000 CAD

Smoking Gun Interactive is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran’s status, age or disability.

Keywords Studios is dedicated to following a well-established Equal Opportunities Policy. We endeavor to create a workplace which provides for equal opportunities for all employees and potential employees.

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