Black Forest Games GmbH, Offenburg, Germany
– Member of the THQ Nordic family –

Black Forest Games is part of the fastest growing publisher in Europe, Embracer Group, and the biggest studio of THQ Nordic Vienna. Here in the south of Germany, directly at the French border, we combine the creative freedom and culture of an independent studio with the financial security of a big publisher.

We are an international team and we foster diversity. Sharing this mindset is a must for us. We are happy about every candidate that contributes to the diversity of our team.

We are currently looking for a Lead 3D Artist to work on our upcoming high quality projects with Unreal Engine. He will lead a team of 3D artists and two outsourcing managers who are managing external teams. The candidate would be part of our art team, reporting directly to our technical art director.

Important for this key role is always having an understanding of the vision for the whole game and the capability to communicate it and control the execution.

Responsibilities:

• Manage 3D asset production from our internal team (props/vehicles/weapons/buildings…), giving visual feedback and validating also technical aspects.
• Manage outsourcing managers taking care of work done by external studios, and make sure that style/quality/technical requirements are on par with the work done internally.
• Communicate/coordinate with other department leads, define priorities and make sure that dependencies with other departments are considered.
• You must have a good and clear vision of all the work which needs to be achieved in the 3d department for the whole game, and plan and prioritize accordingly, not only think about daily feedback sessions with your team.
• Maintain and improve assets creation workflow by always researching new tools/technologies/ways of working having the potential of increasing quality and efficiency.

Reporting Lines:

Reporting directly to the technical art director

Requirements:

• Shipped at least 1 title as a lead 3d artist + shipped 3 or more games as 3d artist.
• 5+ years’ experience at a game studio working as a senior 3d artist.
• Team management experience, able to give feedbacks on respect of style/quality and technical constraints.
• Able to work on different visual styles, from realistic to stylized.
• Strong knowledge of technical constraints related to 3d real time engines.
• Strong hard surface modeling, ability to create hard surface props.
• Strong ability to sculpt organic shapes.
• Proficient in the high poly, low poly baking workflow
• Proficient in creating efficient Mapping, minimizing seams and distortion
• Proficient in Zbrush, 3DS Max, Substance Painter, Photoshop.
• Self-motivated, technical problem solver.

Pluses:

• Experience with Substance designer, World machine, Marvelous designer, Speedtree.
• Experience with Unreal Engine 4.
• Having notions of lighting.
• Having worked on Xbox and PlayStation games before, not only PC.

We would like to see your portfolio (assessment).

What else do we offer ?

• Flexible working hours
• 28 days of holiday
• Competitive salary
• Green office
• Stability of a successful publisher paired with creative freedom of an independent studio

And the chance to work with a great team in an open culture where your opinion and input is welcome and considered, beyond your dedicated task.

Why join Black Forest Games ?

We are a team with a long history of looking for long-term companions – we are hiring for the studio, not for the project. This is an important part of our company philosophy. Talent is always welcome, no matter where you are from. We offer a family friendly work-life balance and a lot of flexibility.

Here you can work on IPs known worldwide and help to shape them.

As a bonus, Black Forest Games is located in one of the most beautiful and wealthiest areas in South of Germany, located closely to Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Basel. Getting here is easy, because of excellent traffic conditions – 3 airports about 30 minutes away, the Autobahn and the ICE station right around the corner. All of this in a region where kids still play in the nature and drive to school by bike.

You love everything about us but you don’t want to live in Germany? No problem, lots of our developers are living cross the border in Strasbourg, France and get here easily by train or car. Strasbourg is one of the biggest cities in France with 500.000 citizens.