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 Senior Environment Artist - Vistas

Come join the award winning team at Santa Monica Studio as a Vista Artist! Contribute to the artistic vision and development of a product with a specialized focus on creating fantastic vistas through the generation of matte paintings, skyboxes, and background geometry.

A Vista Artist must possess the ability to effectively collaborate with a wide-range of development team members outside of their direct discipline such as the Art Director, Environment Artists, FX Artists, Designers, Technical Artist, Animators, Programmers and Producers to optimally achieve artistic goals and implementation as they relate to design and technological considerations.
Responsibilities:

• Create set extensions to game levels by generating matte paintings, skyboxes, and background geometry.
• Work closely with the Art Director, Art Lead, Environment Artists, and Concept Artists to create vistas that work aesthetically and represent concept work and artistic vision.
• Work with Lighting Artists, Environment Artists, FX Artists and Tech Art groups to ensure that vistas are set up to light and render within frame rate and technical parameters.
• Maintain a strong knowledge of the game’s design to support communication and enable early identification of issues, as well as help drive participation in discussions.
• Facilitate requests or information needs regarding any aspect of the vista art creation process as needed.
• Demonstrate skill in matte painting, skybox creation, level art workflow, including assembly, set dressing, lighting and asset composition across levels. 
• Possess strong time management and prioritization skills. This entails collaborating with the Production group to develop task lists to ensure assignments are progressing as expected according to schedules, milestones and overall project goals.

Requirements:

• Minimum 2 years industry experience or comparable professional experience.
• Strong traditional fine art skills, training and production experience (illustration, painting, organic forms, color theory, perspective, 2D & 3D design.) Good understanding of composition, rendering and lighting.
• Expertise in creating stunning, but highly efficient 360 vistas by using 2d/3d elements to fake parallax in the environment.
• Exceptional visual and technical understanding in modeling, rendering & texturing, with matte painting as focus.
• Proficient in the use of Maya (or 3d modeling package), Substance Painter and Designer, Photoshop, and Z-Brush.
• Familiarity with video game product development including, but not limited to workflow, tools, lighting, high and low poly modeling, texture painting, particle systems, mapping techniques, UV layout, in-game animation, material setup, layout, VFX, and engine parameters/optimizations desirable.
• Basic knowledge of runtime Materials in games, and creating/animating environment FX like moving clouds, lightning, and other FX.
• Knowledge of photography and camera techniques.
• Good communication, organizational, time management and interpersonal skills.
• Can work under minimal direction and oversight to determine and develop the best approach to solutions. 
• A Bachelor of the Arts degree in fine arts or relevant curriculum or equivalent skillset

Preferred Skills:

• Experience developing two or more published titles is considered a strength.
• Previous or next-gen video game platform experience is desirable.
• Knowledge of World Machine, Vue, Terragen is a plus.

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