Senior Character Concept Artist

Naughty Dog is seeking a Senior Character Concept Artist to join their team, focusing on creating compelling characters and creatures for award-winning, narrative-driven games. This role involves significant collaboration with Art and Game Directors, as well as Design, 3D art, Animation, and Rigging departments, to develop innovative artistic solutions. Key responsibilities include generating high-vision concept art, providing detailed paint-overs, offering feedback to outsourcing partners, and mentoring junior artists. The ideal candidate will drive innovation in art pipelines, manage concept assets, and ensure high-fidelity results through strong communication and foundational art skills, contributing to the next generation of Naughty Dog's acclaimed titles.

Must Have

• Collaborate with Art Director and Game Director to create characters, props, visual effects, and high vision concept art.
• Create pivotal content, mood boards, and quick iterative sketches for theme directions.
• Work with Design, Character 3D art, Animation, and Rigging departments on production needs and artistic solutions.
• Collaborate with 3D Artists by providing extensive paint-overs and call-out sheets.
• Work with outsourcing to provide feedback on concepts and 3D models.
• Help mentor other concept artists and animators.
• Set quality targets for new or existing properties.
• Drive innovation of new artist pipelines or standards to improve productivity.
• Manage Miro board and network folder for latest concepts and streamlined production.
• Strengthen intra and inter-team communication for highest fidelity results.
• Provide detailed and relevant feedback across creative materials.
• Extensive knowledge of latest game development tools, techniques, and workflows.
• Strong design skills to render realistic believable creatures, characters, and mechanical characters.
• Actively improve skills and maintain awareness of industry techniques and tools.
• At least 6-8 years of experience as a concept artist on at least one AAA title.
• Great capacity to receive art direction and perform well within a team setting.
• Very strong portfolio showing high quality concepts with compelling design, composition, and storytelling.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Strong organizational and project management skills.
• Keen eye and strong foundational art skills including form, lighting, colors, and composition.
• Knowledge of working with various 3D packages for concept work and collaboration.

For nearly 40 years, Naughty Dog has been crafting best-selling, critically acclaimed games that constantly push the boundaries of narrative, gameplay, and technology. Naughty Dog recently released The Last of Us Part II Remastered as well as a current generation remake of The Last of Us Part I for the PS5. We're also proud to say that The Last of Us Part I is now available for the first time on PC. Currently, we’re busy at the kennel working on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and The Last of Us Part II Remastered for PC and we'd love to find talented individuals to join us.

Naughty Dog games have long been lauded for their evocative, character-driven stories and attention to detail. We are committed to innovation within our games and as such have curated some of the top creative and technically innovative minds in the industry. We welcome a diverse pool of candidates and believe that a broad range of cultural and life experiences contribute to the overall well-being and success of the studio and the titles we craft together.

You’ll be responsible for contributing to concept art and collaborating in creating compelling characters and creatures that fit seamlessly within the narrative-driven worlds we build. By working alongside other departments and disciplines to inspire, collaborate and develop artistic solutions!

What you will do:

• Collaborates with Art Director and Game Director to create characters, props, visual effects, production callouts, high vision concept art and other visual guides and tasks as needed
• Create pivotal content and mood boards and quick iterative sketches and mood board briefings to inspire exciting theme directions for the Game Directors
• Work with Design, Character 3D art, Animation and Rigging departments to discuss production needs, technical logistics and build artistic solutions
• Collaborate with 3D Artists by providing extensive paint-overs and call-out sheets
• Work with outsourcing to provide feedback on the concepts and 3D models
• Help mentor other concept artists and animators and collaborate to bring their vision to life
• Sets “quality targets” for new or existing properties
• Drives innovation of new artist pipelines, or new standards to improve artist productivity
• Manage Miro board and network folder to keep tabs on the latest concepts and help streamline the production
• Strengthen intra and inter-team communication to ensure the highest fidelity results
• Provides detailed and relevant feedback across a variety of creative materials
• Extensive knowledge of the latest game development tools, techniques, and workflows and ability to share this with the team
• Other creative duties as assigned

What skills you will use:

• Strong design skills with the ability to render realistic believable creatures, characters, mechanical characters and prop concepts using modern industry standard tools and techniques
• Actively improve your skills and maintain an awareness of industry techniques, tools, evaluate competitive products, learning new software packages and traditional art methods
• At least 6 – 8 years of experience as a concept artist, working on at least one AAA title
• Great capacity to receive art direction and perform well within a team setting – collaboration is a fundamental building block of our team
• Very strong portfolio showing high quality concepts that demonstrate compelling design, composition and storytelling
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong organizational and project management skills
• Keen eye and strong foundational art skills to include form, lighting, colors, and composition
• Knowledge of working with various 3D packages, used in concept work and in collaboration with other departments

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The estimated USA base pay range for this zone (Los Angeles area) is listed below. This role may be eligible for additional compensation packages that includes annual bonus and other incentive plans.

$143,700 - $179,600 USD