Senior Character Artist – Outsourcing

Omeda Studios; United States; Remote; USD 86,000 - 119,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Global remote team

25 days holiday incl. holidays

EMI Stock Options

Healthcare

Job summary

Omeda Studios is seeking a Senior Character Artist – Outsourcing to manage providers for hero content and ensure production-ready assets. You will review deliveries, set quality gates, and guide both external partners and internal teams.

The role balances hands-on character work with oversight of outsourced animation and texture production. You will act as the primary technical liaison for outsourcing partners, ensuring rigs, textures and materials meet our standards while maintaining UK-aligned

Qualifications

• 5+ years in character art for games, with at least one shipped title.
• Direct experience of outsourcing, from either side of the table.
• A strong portfolio of realistic, game-ready characters.
• Expert knowledge of ZBrush, Substance Painter and Maya, plus 3ds Max, PBR and layered, mask-driven material workflows.
• Hands-on Unreal Engine 5 experience, including material or shader setup, texture sets, LODs and how character assets behave in a live game.
• Modelling with skin production in mind to ensure skinning and topology deform correctly.
• Excellent written English with direct feedback ability.
• Working hours aligned with the UK, or slightly later for overlap with US team.

Responsibilities

• Act as the artistic and technical point of contact for outsourcing partners, managing day-to-day submissions.
• Review every delivery with actionable feedback, ensuring consistency across assets.
• Be the technical sign-off gate from block-out through high poly, UVs, textures and final package.
• Provide concept-stage input on reuses and production feasibility.
• Review partner estimates and collaborate with production to challenge them.
• Prepare assets and base rigs for partners, including notes and smart materials.
• Maintain and enforce character art standards, budgets, naming conventions and workflows.
• Step in to finish an asset in-house if drops below quality bar.

Skills

Character art

Outsourcing experience

Written English

Sculpt quality discernment

Task breakdown & quoting

Tools

ZBrush

Substance Painter

Maya

3ds Max

Unreal Engine 5

Job description

Senior Character Artist – Outsourcing

Full-time · Remote (UK working hours)

Omeda Studios is a remote-first game studio and the team behind Predecessor, a fast-paced third-person MOBA built in Unreal Engine 5 for PC, PlayStation and Xbox. Since launching in 2024 we've grown past two million players, and we ship new heroes and cosmetics on a continuous patch cadence.

A growing share of our character content is produced with outsourcing partners, and we're looking for someone to own that relationship from the art side. You'll be the person our partners talk to, the person who decides whether a delivery meets the bar, and the person whose feedback raises the standard of the next one.

Please read this part carefully. This is not a pure hero production role. At least half of your time is outsourcing: reviewing submissions, giving feedback, and holding the technical line. The remainder is internal reviews and hands-on hero and skin production. If your ambition is to spend most of your week sculpting, this isn't the right role for you, and we'd rather say so now than at the offer stage.

In This Role You Will

• Act as the artistic and technical point of contact for our outsourcing partners, running day-to-day communication across stage-gated deliveries


• Review every delivery and give clear, actionable technical feedback, paint-overs and annotated screenshots included. Make sure that feedback carries across assets instead of being re-issued round after round


• Be the technical sign-off gate. You approve each stage before the next one starts, from block-out through high poly, low poly and UVs, textures and final package


• Give technical input at concept stage: what we can reuse from existing characters, what has to be built new, and what should change so a design packs cleanly into our texture sets and lines up with the existing rig. Our Art Director owns the concepts, you make sure they're producible


• Review estimates from our partners and be an active part in challenging them together with production


• Prepare what our partners need to start, including base meshes and rigs, block-outs, smart materials and the per-asset technical notes that go with them


• Keep our character art standards current and make sure they're adhered to, covering budgets, naming and file conventions, texturing and mask workflows and rig requirements. Most of this is written already, so this is maintenance and enforcement rather than starting from scratch


• Step in and finish an asset in-house when a delivery isn't going to reach the bar in time, and contribute to internal hero and skin production

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years in character art for games, with at least one shipped title


• Direct experience of outsourcing, from either side of the table. Time at or with an external development partner is a real advantage here, because you'll know what a partner needs to succeed and where estimates get optimistic


• A strong portfolio of realistic, game-ready characters


• Expert knowledge of ZBrush, Substance Painter and Maya, plus a solid grasp of 3ds Max, PBR and layered, mask-driven material workflows


• Hands-on Unreal Engine 5 experience, including material or shader setup, texture sets, LODs and how character assets behave in a live game


• Modelling with skin production in mind. Our skins have to fit a hero's existing skeleton, so joints and pivots need to line up exactly and topology has to deform cleanly


• An eye for sculpt quality, able to tell polished form from box-modelled surface noise and explain the difference in a way someone can act on


• Able to break a piece of work into tasks and days, and to judge when a quoted number doesn't add up


• Excellent written English, and the confidence to give direct feedback kindly and precisely. Most of your communication will be written and asynchronous


• Working hours aligned with the UK, or slightly later for more overlap with our US-based team

Nice to Have

• Hair card and groom creation with FiberShop


• Marvelous Designer and cloth simulation setup


• Skinning and weight painting


• Experience managing more than one partner in parallel


• Familiarity with Perforce


• Passionate about MOBAs

Benefits

• Global, remote team


• 25 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays


• EMI Stock Options


• Healthcare


• More to come!