Lead Environment Artist

**Position Summary**:
As the Lead Environment Artist, you’ll lead a team of talented artists to create captivating, 3D stylized environments within an immersive RPG world waiting to be explored. You will manage and direct the team to become visual storytellers, delivering high quality environments that meet production goals. You know how to modify lighting, play around with composition, and add just the right amount of detail to develop a game space with plenty of personality while ensuring the team can track towards their milestones confidently and effectively.
The Lead Environment Artist will work closely with the Art Director to define the game’s art style and work with other leads to execute the game’s vision.

About Us
Our mission at Riyo Games is to craft retro-infused JRPGs that awaken cherished childhood memories. We’re growing the studio by assembling a dream team of talent from across the globe. Join us on this epic quest to make fun, narrative-rich games in an inclusive, supportive, and fun studio environment
You’ll be working on Threads of Time, a 2.5D JRPG inspired by Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy where you get to travel from the pre-historic era to the end of time
- Become part of a veteran team that includes legendary developers who led iconic titles such as Xenoblade Chronicles, Legend of Mana, and more
- 4 weeks paid vacation (1 week of which is taken in late December)
- Collaborative environment with opportunities to contribute to the game’s creative design and take ownership of features
- Competitive salary and benefits including medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
- Opportunities to help you strengthen your skills or learn something new
- A workplace that appreciates and values diversity and inclusivity

Leadership
- Juggle creating 3D environments and assets while organizing, planning, and leading the environment art team
- Perform regular 1:1s with team members to ensure alignment and performance management
- Regularly interface with production to review and track deliverables to ensure milestones are being delivered at desired quality
- Study, review, validate, and supervise the work of Environment Artists to ensure that the environments created respect the artistic vision, meet the needs of the game, including technical requirements, and achieve the required quality
- Define development opportunities for team members and coach them to achieve these goals
- Provide guidance and mentorship to other artists on your team, as well as reviews and critiques for external artists

**Responsibilities**:

- Create stylized 3D environments and assets from concept art and descriptions
- Work closely with Art and Creative Directors to ensure that environments and assets match the quality bar and vision for the game
- Bring life and excitement to the game through your design and implementation of high-quality, stylized 3D environments and assets
- Help establish and maintain both aesthetic quality and technical performance standards (polycount, memory, draw calls, etc.)
- Build and compose scenes in Unreal Engine, including asset placement and lighting
- Propose and establish optimized pipelines for improving quality and time of production
- Working closely with game designers to create and adjust environments based on gameplay needs
- Work closely with game designers to create and adjust environments based on gameplay needs
- Contribute innovative and original ideas toward the game’s visual identity and development

**Requirements**:

- A minimum of 5 years of experience in 3D modeling/sculpting/texturing
- Experience managing a team of artists
- Mastery of stylized environment texturing and workflows
- Strong familiarity with setting up environments within game engines
- Strong modelling, UV unwrapping, and texturing skills are required
- Knowledge of the technical constraints relating to real-time, 3D engines, and level editors
- Your compositional skills and understanding of the fundamentals of art (lighting, composition, colour theory, etc) are of an advanced level
- Good sense of asset organization and adherence to naming conventions
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
- Ability to take direction well
- Comfortable with ambiguity and able to drive towards clarity to deliver work on time
- Shipped at least 1 game title
- A love of JRPGs

Pluses
- Experience in Unreal Engine
- Experience with Pixel Art
- A resident of Ontario or Quebec, Canada, or willing to move here

**Salary**: $90,000 - $120,000 CAD

Please note although this is a full-time remote position, applicants must reside in Canada. Thank you, we look forward to hearing from you