Virtual Human Designer

De Art; Dubai; On-site; AED 420,000 - 660,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Interdisciplinary team

Advanced tools

Career growth

Job summary

De Art seeks a highly creative Virtual Human Designer to craft believable digital humans, AI characters, and identities for interactive experiences. Translate narratives into distinctive visual identities and collaborate with writers, AI specialists, and 3D teams to produce production-ready assets.

You will shape facial design, anatomy, wardrobe, and materials, ensuring consistency across platforms and real-time environments. Fluency in English and a strong portfolio are essential.

Qualifications

• Portfolio or showreel demonstrating strong character design and digital human work.
• Fluency in English.
• Strong visual storytelling and ability to translate abstract concepts into visual characteristics.
• Evidence of relevant visual development or 3D projects in portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Design the visual identity and appearance of virtual humans, AI characters, and digital avatars.
• Develop character concepts based on narrative, personality, background, role, age, and cultural context.
• Create character design references covering facial features, body proportions, hairstyle, skin, eyes, wardrobe, and accessories.
• Develop design documentation including character sheets, mood boards, and turnaround concepts.
• Define visual characteristics that convey personality, identity, emotional state, and social background.
• Collaborate with writers, AI specialists, and 3D teams to ensure alignment with narrative and production needs.
• Provide visual direction for modeling, texturing, grooming, clothing, and materials.

Skills

Portfolio/showreel

Fluent English

Strong communication

Education

BA/MA in Character Design, Animation, Digital Art, 3D Design, Computer Graphics, Game Design, Digital Media, Visual Communication, Fine Arts

Tools

Maya

Blender

ZBrush

Substance 3D

Unreal Engine

Unity

Job description

Job Title: Virtual Human Designer — AI Characters & Digital Humans (1 Position)

About the Job

We are seeking a highly creative, detail-oriented, and technically aware Virtual Human Designer to design and develop believable, expressive, and distinctive virtual humans, AI characters, and digital human identities.

The successful candidate will be responsible for translating character concepts, human references, narratives, personalities, and experience requirements into compelling digital human designs. The role combines character design, visual development, human anatomy, digital art, 3D character development, facial design, clothing, visual identity, and emerging AI and real-time technologies.

This is a hands-on interdisciplinary role working closely with character artists, 3D modelers, texture artists, riggers, animators, AI specialists, writers, narrative designers, performance specialists, and developers to create virtual humans that are visually convincing, expressive, coherent, and suitable for interactive experiences.

Responsibilities

• Design the visual identity and overall appearance of virtual humans, AI characters, and digital avatars.
• Develop character concepts based on narrative, personality, background, role, age, cultural context, environment, and intended user experience.
• Create detailed character design references covering facial features, body proportions, hairstyle, skin, eyes, wardrobe, accessories, and distinctive physical characteristics.
• Develop character sheets, visual references, mood boards, turnaround concepts, expression references, and other design documentation.
• Design believable human anatomy, proportions, facial structures, skin characteristics, hair, hands, eyes, teeth, and other details required for realistic or stylized virtual humans.
• Define visual characteristics that communicate personality, identity, emotional qualities, social background, profession, lifestyle, and narrative role.
• Collaborate with writers and narrative designers to ensure that visual identity reflects character history, motivations, relationships, and personality.
• Work with 3D artists and technical artists to translate approved concepts into production-ready digital human assets.
• Provide visual direction and specifications for modeling, sculpting, texturing, shading, grooming, clothing, accessories, and character materials.
• Design and refine facial features and expressions to support believable emotional communication and character performance.
• Collaborate with rigging and animation teams to ensure that character designs are compatible with facial rigs, body rigs, deformation systems, and animation requirements.
• Work with performance and motion-capture specialists to ensure that character appearance supports natural body movement, facial performance, and physical expression.
• Collaborate with AI specialists to ensure that the visual identity of a virtual human is consistent with its personality, conversational behavior, memory, and intelligent interaction system.
• Design visual responses and appearance-related behaviors that may change according to emotional states, environments, interactions, or narrative situations.
• Contribute to the design of digital humans for conversational, educational, entertainment, social, immersive, and interactive applications.
• Evaluate digital human models and rendered outputs for visual quality, realism, consistency, anatomical accuracy, and character identity.
• Identify visual inconsistencies and coordinate revisions across modeling, texturing, grooming, facial systems, clothing, lighting, and animation.
• Develop design guidelines to maintain consistency across multiple versions, environments, platforms, and applications.
• Work with real-time technologies and digital human platforms to understand how character designs perform in interactive environments.
• Support the optimization of virtual human assets for real-time rendering while maintaining visual quality and character identity.
• Explore generative AI, procedural techniques, digital sculpting, photogrammetry, 3D scanning, synthetic media, and other emerging technologies relevant to virtual human creation.
• Research contemporary approaches to digital humans, virtual identities, AI characters, character realism, stylization, and human representation.
• Participate in user testing and review sessions to understand how audiences perceive and interpret virtual human appearance and identity.
• Document design decisions, character specifications, references, revisions, and production requirements.
• Help establish scalable design methodologies and visual standards for the development of multiple virtual humans and AI characters.

Qualifications

• Minimum BA/MA in Character Design, Animation, Digital Art, 3D Design, Computer Graphics, Game Design, Digital Media, Visual Communication, Fine Arts, or a related field; equivalent professional experience will also be considered.
• At least 3–5 years of relevant experience in character design, digital humans, 3D character development, game development, animation, VFX, virtual production, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of human anatomy, facial structure, body proportions, gesture, posture, and visual characterization.
• Demonstrable experience designing believable human or humanoid characters for digital environments.
• Strong skills in visual development, concept design, character reference development, and visual storytelling.
• Experience with 3D character creation and familiarity with tools such as Maya, Blender, ZBrush, Substance 3D, Marvelous Designer, Unreal Engine, Unity, or comparable software.
• Understanding of 3D character pipelines, including modeling, sculpting, retopology, UVs, texturing, materials, grooming, rigging, and animation.
• Experience designing realistic or stylized faces, skin, eyes, hair, hands, clothing, and other elements of digital human appearance.
• Familiarity with facial animation, facial rigs, blendshapes, body rigs, motion capture, facial capture, and real-time character performance.
• Understanding of physically based materials, lighting, rendering, and real-time visualization is highly desirable.
• Familiarity with digital human technologies such as Meta Human or comparable character-generation and digital-human platforms is an advantage.
• Awareness of AI-generated imagery, generative AI, AI characters, conversational AI, and emerging synthetic-media technologies.
• Ability to balance artistic quality, technical requirements, performance constraints, and production feasibility.
• Strong visual judgment and exceptional attention to detail.
• Ability to translate abstract concepts such as personality, emotion, identity, and narrative into concrete visual characteristics.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills within multidisciplinary creative and technical teams.
• Ability to receive, interpret, and implement feedback from directors, writers, AI specialists, animators, developers, and other stakeholders.
• Ability to research and rapidly learn new tools, workflows, and technologies.
• Portfolio or showreel demonstrating strong character design and digital human work, including relevant visual development or 3D projects.
• Fluency in English; additional languages are an asset.

What We Offer

• The opportunity to design distinctive next-generation virtual humans, AI characters, and digital identities.
• A highly interdisciplinary environment combining character design, artificial intelligence, animation, storytelling, performance, real-time 3D, and immersive technologies.
• The opportunity to establish new visual approaches to digital humans and human representation.
• Close collaboration with specialists across AI, character design, narrative, animation, performance, software, and interactive technologies.
• Access to advanced tools and emerging technologies for digital human creation, real-time 3D, generative AI, and interactive character development.
• The opportunity to influence how virtual humans look, express identity, communicate emotion, and exist within digital environments.
• Professional growth through experimentation, research, prototyping, and participation in innovative digital human projects.

We welcome applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds and encourage cross-disciplinary practitioners who combine character design, 3D art, animation, AI, storytelling, visual development, performance, or immersive technologies to apply.