Principal Character Artist
Encino, CA
Art /
Full Time /
Hybrid
Giant Skull is an independent game studio on a mission to craft unforgettable single-player, gameplay-driven action-adventures in rich, immersive worlds. We are currently working on a new game set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. We are highly collaborative and value empowering autonomy; each individual at Giant Skull has the opportunity to feel their impact across the game, studio, and team. If you’re ready to join a studio where every voice shapes the adventure, we’d love to create something extraordinary together.
The Role:
As a Principal Character Artist, you will help define and elevate the look of the characters who inhabit our world. With a focus on human and humanoid characters, you’ll help shape the identity of the cast through high quality, expressive, and technically excellent 3D models. You’ll collaborate across disciplines to ensure our characters are compelling, grounded in the world, and optimized for performance and storytelling.
Impact and Ownership
- You will own the creation of high-quality characters and creatures from sculpt through polished textures, including facial features, clothing, gear, and accessories.
- You will help set the quality bar for character art, collaborating with art leadership to contribute towards establishing the visual language for characters across the game.
- You will take initiative to proactively drive progress, push quality and innovation, and use good judgement to predict and solve problems.
- You will iterate with other disciplines, ensuring models feel cohesive to the vision and support dynamic performance, player abilities, and emotional expression in service of player experience.
- You will help drive the character pipeline, contributing towards the development of tools, workflows, and documentation that support scalability and cross-functional collaboration.
- You will participate in art reviews and provide constructive feedback and insight to other artists, supporting individual growth and reinforcing quality standards.
- You will provide insight for decisions around shaders, materials, and surfacing that bring characters to life visually and support gameplay readability.
- You will contribute towards visual storytelling ideation such as character expression, costume design, and visual cues that reinforce personalities and lore.
- You may mentor and support other artists, providing constructive feedback and technical insight to elevate the overall bar for character development.
- You may contribute to other areas of art development, such as creature or other 3D assets, technical, and/or conceptual contributions.
- You will set an example for positive collaboration, studio values, and professional conduct.
Qualifications
- You have extensive professional experience in character art for games, including ownership of multiple high-fidelity human and/or humanoid characters from start to finish.
- You have a deep understanding of anatomy, form, silhouette, and materials combined with a flair for character appeal.
- You have exceptional sculpting, modeling, and texturing skills, and deep experience taking assets from blockout to engine-ready.
- You have experience proactively collaborating across disciplines to bring characters to life holistically.
- You are highly skilled in relevant tools and modern pipelines (e.g., ZBrush, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, and games engines such as Unreal) and have a strong understanding of how to achieve lifelike materials and surfaces.
- You are team-focused and have excellent communication and collaboration skills. You prioritize doing what is best for the player experience and work in partnership with other disciplines.
- You excel at working autonomously and are a proactive problem solver, you take initiative to help drive improvements and resolve issues.
- You value a candid feedback culture and have the ability to give and receive constructive feedback respectfully.
- You may have experience with creature or non-humanoid character creation.
- You ideally have experience mentoring and growing other artists to become stronger in their craft.
Why Join Giant Skull
- You will collaborate with a passionate team of AAA veterans from studios like Epic, Respawn, Rocksteady, Riot, and more on exciting and ambitious gaming projects.
- You will enjoy a development process that balances collaborative teamwork with a high degree of individual autonomy.
- You will benefit from competitive compensation, access to cutting-edge technology and resources to support your work, as well as opportunities for career growth, personal and professional development.
- You will be shown trust and flexibility through remote or hybrid options, open PTO, and support for balancing work and personal life.
- Your ultimate impact will be unconstrained by your focus areas. You will have the opportunity to shape not only the game we are making but the foundation of our studio and development cultures, best practices, team collaboration, and beyond.
- You will add to a deeply inclusive workplace where every team member is valued and respected.
For this position, our target base salary range is 160k to 210k. Ranges may expand based on experience and location. Salary is just one aspect of our overall compensation package - we also offer opportunities for bonuses, retirement plan matching, and comprehensive benefits. We’re excited to share more about how we invest in our team during the interview process.
