Our client provides outsourced art production to game studios and publishers on premium (AAA/AA) titles. They're hiring a Team Lead to run a group of character artists focused on photorealistic work — bringing concepts to life as fully realised characters, creatures, and personas across a range of projects. The right person combines a strong artistic eye and hands-on production craft with genuine people leadership: guiding a team through creative and technical hurdles, keeping quality consistently high, and giving feedback that actually helps artists improve.

General Information

• Sector: outsourced art production for premium video games

• Engagement type: full-time, permanent -

• Working pattern: fully remote

• Language: strong written and spoken English required for day-to-day collaboration and documentation

Tasks and Deliverables

• Build out and lead a photorealistic character art team/discipline within the wider studio

• Review and quality-control the team's output against artistic and technical standards

• Support artists through creative and technical challenges, and organise team workload across projects and tasks

• Write technical specifications and reference guides for the team

• Take part in hiring as a technical interviewer/reviewer, working alongside the recruitment team to grow the group

• Contribute to project estimation and test/trial projects

• Stay hands-on in production: build high-poly and low-poly photoreal character models from concept art, including clean UV mapping, texture baking, and texturing work

• Help maintain and develop the team's collective portfolio

Required Experience

• Proven experience as a Project Lead or Team Lead within a photorealistic/realistic 3D character art team in game development

• Track record managing and reviewing a team's output against both artistic and technical quality bars

• Strong mentoring skills— able to guide artists through problems and deliver clear, constructive feedback

• A refined artistic eye and genuine commitment to high visual quality

• Solid, current knowledge of character art pipelines, tools, and industry trends

• Strong full-cycle character creation skills: high-poly sculpting (ZBrush), SubD modelling (3dsMax/Maya), topology built for animation, cloth simulation (Marvelous Designer), anatomy, UV mapping, texture baking, and texturing (Substance Painter)

• Upper-intermediate or better English, written and spoken

Nice to Have

• Experience with game engines such as Unreal Engine 4/5 or Unity

• Proven ability creating creatures as well as human/humanoid characters

• Understanding of rigging and animation pipelines

• Strong foundational drawing skills

How to Apply

To apply, please send your CV along with a portfolio showing photorealistic character work, ideally including examples of team-led or supervised projects alongside your own hands-on production pieces.

CV to clare@big-planet.biz