Art Lead

Elsewhere; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 180,000; Part time

Job summary

A dynamic game studio seeks an Art Lead to define the visual style for their upcoming surreal card game. Emphasizing your illustrative skills, you'll own the art style, create exciting visual concepts, and guide junior artists within this innovative team. Passion for games and creative collaboration are essential, as is an openness to utilizing generative AI to enhance artistic potential. Work can be remote or based in San Francisco, CA. This is a contract-to-hire position with opportunities for full-time employment.

Qualifications

• Extensive portfolio of diverse art styles.
• Deep passion for games and gaming culture.
• Experience in game development from concept to completion.
• Ability to define and communicate an art style.
• Strong personal aesthetic and colorful portfolio.
• Collaborative in nature, excited to work with a team.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the art style for the game.
• Create art samples and collaborate on moodboards.
• Produce key art for the game.
• Manage and guide junior artists.
• Incorporate generative AI technologies in art.

Skills

Illustration and concept art

Strong opinions on art direction in games

Open-minded towards generative AI

Ambition and eagerness to be part of a large project

Collaborative mindset

Tools

Photoshop

Procreate

Illustrator

Figma

Blender

Job description

Remote or San Francisco, CA

Elsewhere is hiring an Art Lead to define a stunning visual style for our upcoming game. We’re a venture-backed indie studio working on a surreal card game set inside your own dreaming mind. We aim for the project to combine the soul of a stellar indie title with the strategic depth and replayability of collective card games and deckbuilding roguelikes, ultimately becoming a forever-game that reaches millions of players.

This role will own and define the art style from end-to-end for our game. You’ll create art samples, collaborate on moodboards, and finally create the key art that defines our game. From there, you’ll create tons of amazing art within the visual style you created with us. Eventually, you’ll also help manage more junior artists to work within that style.

Our game incorporates generative AI in a way that celebrates (rather than replaces) human art. It’s not necessary for you to have used generative AI in your own projects or have any experience at all. But we ask that you be open-minded towards it.

This is a contract-to-hire position. Work will begin with paid trial projects. If things go well, we’d love for you to join our team full-time with salary and benefits.

Qualifications

• You love to draw. You have an extensive portfolio of art you’ve made over the years in a diversity of styles. You’re incredibly strong at illustration and concept art. You’ve created countless original characters.
• You love games and the culture surrounding them deeply. You’ve played more games than you can count across genres. Bonus points if you’re a fan of tabletop or deckbuilding games. You have strong opinions about what great art direction looks like in games.
• You've made a game (side project, indie, or AAA) and can point to specific art you owned from concept to completion in your portfolio.
• You can define, iterate on, and communicate an art style that’s stunning and distinctive. And you can communicate it to junior artists.
• You have a strong personal aesthetic and a comprehensive portfolio of art. Bonus points for work that is highly colorful and stylized.
• You’re experienced with tools like Photoshop, Procreate, and Illustrator. Bonus points if you’ve worked with Figma or 3D tools like Blender.
• You’re enthusiastic or at least open-minded about the ways the latest generative AI technologies can augment (but not replace) creative talent, and ideally have opinions about which tools are the most helpful.
• You're ambitious. You want to be an early part of something big. Something with massive potential that players are going to absolutely love. You want to work with a game studio that pushes the envelope of games as a medium.
• You're collaborative. You're excited to work closely with our community and whole team to create a unified vision.

Bonus Points For:

• Love for (and participation in) a fandom of any kind.
• Experience working on a small team, ideally in a startup environment.
• Experience working as an Art Lead, Art Director (or similar role), leading and/or mentoring other artists.
• Experience and intuition working on visual, UI/UX, and product design in Figma or similar.
• Experience with sharing your work on social media or video.
• Being based in San Francisco, CA (or being open to relocate).