Art Lead

About this task

The Role

Lead visual development for a narrative-heavy RPG, building on its established artistic foundations and guiding a small multidisciplinary art team throughout production. Balance artistic ambition with practical production needs to create a cohesive, evocative game world.

Responsibilities

- Lead and refine the game’s visual direction, developing its visual language and guiding consistent execution throughout production.
- Provide clear direction, constructive feedback, and mentorship across concept art, 3D, environment art, and other disciplines. Identify skill gaps and support team growth.
- Set visual quality standards and guide work from initial concepts through its final appearance in the game, ensuring individual assets contribute to a coherent visual identity.
- Collaborate with narrative, writing, and design teams to express the game’s themes, characters, and atmosphere through environments and visual storytelling.
- Work with production and discipline leads to set priorities, scope work, allocate resources, and manage iteration, balancing visual quality with schedules and team capacity.
- Partner with technical art and engineering to resolve creative and technical challenges, accounting for performance, tools, and workflow constraints.
- Communicate creative intent through paintovers, references, visual briefs, and reviews, helping the team progress confidently toward finished work.
- Encourage experimentation and constructive discussion while providing the clarity and support needed for effective delivery.

Required Qualifications

- Proven experience as an Art Director or Senior Artist in the video game industry, with experience across 3D and 2D, ideally relevant to Hopetown’s 2.5D art pipeline.
- A portfolio demonstrating the ability to create and maintain a visual style across a relevant type of project.
- Experience hiring, mentoring, and building an art team from scratch, including managing team growth and performance.
- Strong ability to define and articulate a visual style, communicate it to stakeholders and team members, and translate abstract ideas into tangible visual elements.
- Experience managing artistic workflows and content production cycles, making decisions that maintain quality while meeting production timelines.
- Ability to collaborate effectively across disciplines to maintain a unified creative vision.

Preferred Qualifications

- Understanding of visual trends in the gaming industry and enthusiasm for narrative-driven games.
- Expertise in concept art, 2D modelling, UI design, or animation. Hands-on art production experience is valuable, although the role focuses on directing.
- Passion for visual storytelling and using art to enhance narrative and evoke emotions.
- Experience with different artistic styles and willingness to experiment and adapt to a novel visual direction.
- Curiosity about new tools, techniques, and approaches across game art, and willingness to explore other aspects of game development to improve team understanding.

Working Arrangement and Benefits

- Remote-first working arrangement, with flexibility to work from wherever inspiration strikes.
- Creative freedom to help shape the game’s visual identity.
- Work on a narrative-first, psychologically focused RPG.
- Stock options in an independent studio.