Senior Manager, Lead Environment Artist

$143,800 - $221,700/Yr

Disney - San Jose, CA

Full-time - Senior

San Jose, CA

Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries

About the position

The Lead Environment Artist will play a pivotal role in Disney Digital Entertainment's mission to create an interactive universe that encapsulates the magic of Disney. This position involves leading a talented team of environment artists to develop engaging and immersive game environments based on Disney's iconic properties, including Disney/Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. The role requires a blend of artistic vision, leadership, and collaboration with various disciplines to ensure the creation of high-quality assets and environments that enhance gameplay and visual storytelling.

Responsibilities

• Lead, manage and grow an internal team of highly talented Environment artists.
• Collaborate with artists, designers, and other disciplines to create engaging, inspiring and compelling spaces, environments, props and items based on Disney's robust portfolio.
• Use Maya, ZBrush, Substance, Photoshop and Unreal Engine 5 to create high quality assets, materials, layouts and lighting for both architectural and organic environments.
• Iterate on game assets and environments with fellow artists via paint overs, studies, and group critiques to improve visuals and gameplay.
• Work closely with producers and other Leads to coordinate, develop team, and project schedules.
• Champion and manage in-game environment performance and evangelize best practices for asset creation, materials, lighting, etc.
• Serve as a key member of a growing game development team at Disney, helping to build and define the world of our project.

Requirements

• A portfolio of work that accurately represents your personal and team-based artistic achievements.
• Strong leadership, artistic and interpersonal skills, while being a great partner and enjoying collaborative development.
• Minimum of 7 years of PC and console game development experience, including holding a position of Environment Artist and/or Lead for at least 3 years.
• Demonstrated creative vision, an excellent eye for artistic quality and confirmed knowledge of current game development techniques used to achieve specific visual targets.
• Expertise in environmental visual design, including lighting, composition, staging, and architecture.
• Proven understanding of environment creation that supports level design and enhances gameplay.
• Ability to craft unique new assets and also creatively re-using existing libraries.
• Texture and material creation proficiency with Substance Designer/Painter and Adobe Photoshop.
• Experience developing content using Unreal Engine and/or UEFN knowledge of current UE-specific environment creation, lighting and optimization technologies and techniques.

Benefits

• Health and savings benefits
• Educational opportunities
• Special extras that only Disney can provide