Art Lead

Kavalri’s first title, Equestrian the Game, has thrilled players globally, reaching top charts, high player counts, and praise from the community. Now, we're looking for an Art Lead to join our close-knit team, providing leadership and support to drive the art team toward continued success.

As an Art Lead you will play a key role in guiding and inspiring our team of skilled artists. This position carries significant responsibility and offers the chance to further strengthen the team, making your artistic, technical, and leadership skills crucial. You will be responsible for planning, organizing, monitoring, and assessing the team's work to ensure production goals are met on time and of the highest quality. In this role, you will also need to proactively address challenges at both the team and production levels to deliver a visually impressive project. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of artists, cultivating a collaborative and creative atmosphere. Provide clear guidance and constructive feedback, making informed decisions that balance creativity with practical needs. Ensure the team consistently delivers high-quality visual content that aligns with the project's goals.

• Pipeline Management: Oversee the art production pipeline, optimizing workflows, managing deadlines, and ensuring efficient asset creation, integration, and iteration.

• Artistic vision: Collaborate with the Creative Director to understand the vision and ensure all created and integrated assets align with the game's artistic direction while meeting the established quality standards. Work closely with technical artists to ensure assets are implemented effectively, balancing performance and visual quality.

• Asset Creation & Implementation: Guide and contribute to the creation of game assets, including modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, and lighting. Ensure assets are optimized and seamlessly integrated.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience as a Game Artist, with at least 2 years in a leadership role.

• Experience with both mobile and PC/console game development.

• Strong communication and project management skills, with the ability to lead a team and collaborate effectively across departments.

• Ability to drive change and inspire others.

• Ability to work under pressure and adapt to changing project needs.

• Strong artistic skills with a keen eye for detail and visual storytelling.

• Deep understanding of art pipelines and asset optimization.

• Experience in creating and managing LODs to balance performance and visual fidelity on different platforms.

• Strong skills in 3D modeling (Maya, Blender, or 3ds Max), with an emphasis on clean topology for animation and efficient UV mapping.

• Proficiency in tools like Substance Painter/Designer, Photoshop, or Quixel for creating detailed and optimized textures.

• Skilled in setting up lighting in Unity and Unreal, understanding its impact on mood and performance.

• Basic to intermediate skills in rigging and animation, ensuring that assets are animation-ready or understanding how to guide animators effectively.

• Strong grasp of anatomy, composition, color theory, and design principles.

• Basic scripting knowledge.

• Knowledge in Unreal and/or Unity.