Senior Character Artist & Team Leader – Real-Time AAA

NBCUniversal; Montreal; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

NBCUniversal is seeking a Lead Character Artist to own and drive the visual quality of facial characters for an ambitious interactive entertainment experience. This role leads and mentors a team of character artists, partners with the Associate Art Director – Characters, and works across animation, rigging, design, and gameplay to ensure artistic excellence.

You will help scale production, define pipelines, and apply Unreal Engine 5 and MetaHuman standards to deliver high-fidelity characters.

Qualifications

• Minimum 7 years of AAA game development experience focusing on character art.
• Proven leadership, mentoring, or management of artists in production.
• Strong portfolio of high-quality real-time character art.
• Excellent understanding of anatomy, materials, and character design.
• Experience creating content for modern game engines and real-time environments.
• Knowledge of character production pipelines and asset creation workflows.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Translate artistic direction into high-quality character assets supporting visuals and narrative.
• Lead and mentor a team of character artists.
• Review and validate character assets against artistic, technical, and production standards.
• Create and oversee character content: anatomy, materials, clothing, grooming.
• Collaborate with Animation, Design, Tech Art, Engineering, and Production for integration.
• Ensure character content integrates efficiently into gameplay and pipelines.
• Establish best practices for character creation in real-time production.
• Identify opportunities to improve workflows and tools for scalability.
• Collaborate with external partners to maintain quality.
• Support evolution of character art standards and documentation.
• Apply Unreal Engine 5 and MetaHuman best practices.
• Identify and improve production workflows for efficiency.

Job description

NBCUniversal is seeking a Lead Character Artist to own and drive the visual quality of facial characters for an ambitious interactive entertainment experience. This role leads and mentors a team of character artists, partners with the Associate Art Director – Characters, and works across animation, rigging, design, and gameplay to ensure artistic excellence.

You will help scale production, define pipelines, and apply Unreal Engine 5 and MetaHuman standards to deliver high-fidelity characters.