Art Director - Contract - Stylized 3D Strategy Game

Overview

We're looking for a founder-level creative lead who wants to put their fingerprints on an entire IP. If you've wanted to build something from zero, define a visual language nobody's seen yet, and be remembered as one of the voices that shaped a studio, this is that chair. It's a hands-on seat. You'll set the vision and live in the work — building pipelines, opening DCC tools every day, shipping into Unity, and taking environments and characters from grey-box to final polish across UI, key art, and marketing. The Game A strategy game with a real story and a setting we care about. The visual target is 3D, stylized, simple — confident shapes, confident color, silhouettes a player could sketch from memory after one screenshot. Not photoreal. Not warmed-over low-poly. A look that's unmistakably ours, holding up from a unit pip to a cinematic to a Steam capsule.

What You'll Do

• Define and defend the visual language of the IP across characters, world, units, UI, and marketing
• Make calls fast. We'd rather pick wrong on Tuesday and fix it Thursday than burn a month on consensus
• Produce a lot of art. Concept, model, texture, light, present, iterate — you're in the tools every day
• Build the Unity art pipeline that lets a small team punch above its weight
• Direct internal artists, contractors, and AI tools where they earn their keep

Who You Are

• Broad skills: you concept, you model, you texture, you have shader opinions, you can tell at a glance why an icon isn't reading
• Comfortable in Unity — you've shipped stylized 3D into it before and you know where the look gets won or lost between DCC and engine
• Strong taste and strong throughput. Your portfolio looks like one artist with a point of view — not a sampler platter
• You've directed before, and the artists who worked for you would do it again
• No AI allergy. We use it where it speeds us up and steer clear where it would flatten the aesthetic. You can tell the difference and don't get precious about either side
• Strategy game literate. You have favorites, you have opinions on UI density, you can name a unit silhouette you love and one that drives you nuts
• Bonus: narrative-driven game experience, tech art chops, an eye for animation and motion

What You Get

• A founding seat and your fingerprints on every frame of the IP
• A team that ships, trusts the call, and doesn't run a Visual Standards Committee
• A story worth dressing up, and the runway to dress it

How to Apply

Send your portfolio, a paragraph on a game whose art you'd have killed to make (and what you'd have done differently), and a quick paint-over or sketch of how you'd style a strategy game unit if we handed you a blank cube. Cover letters optional. Weird side projects encouraged. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job