Character Concept Artist - Contract

Playground Games are looking for a Character Concept Artist to join our Fable team.

About Us:

As a first-party Xbox Games Studio, we’re passionate about making genre-defining games that are accessible, beautiful, and, most of all, fun. We’re excited to be rebooting the much loved Fable franchise alongside our continued development of the award-winning Forza Horizon series. Our collaborative, diverse, industry-leading team is dedicated to making the best Fable game possible. We’re looking for an exceptional person to help us achieve that goal.

About the role:

As a Character Concept Artist you will be instrumental in designing characters for our game. You will work in conjunction with the Art team to transform ideas into awe inspiring concepts and production paintings. Our ideal candidate is fluent in visual design, with a portfolio that demonstrates excellent fundamental art skills. You must be flexible, highly motivated and detail conscious.

We’re looking for an artist that can capture a whimsical and fairy-tale feeling in their work, exercising a sensitivity that is often missing from modern fantasy epics.

This is a contract role based at our state-of-the-art facilities in Royal Leamington Spa.

What You’ll Do:

• Produce high-fidelity character concepts that support a cinematic finish.
• Create compelling and whimsical creature designs.
• Collaborate with the Narrative, Gameplay and Character Art teams to produce flexible, iterative designs that can inspire the rest of the Fable team.
• Develop unique weapon, armour and costume concepts in line with our established art vision and historical construction techniques.
• Actively accept and action feedback from Art Leads and the Art Director
• Solve visual problems with creative flair whilst remaining considerate of technical and gameplay constraints.

What you’ll bring:

• A portfolio demonstrating excellent fundamental art skills- with an emphasis on anatomy and character design. This can be provided as a link to a portfolio website or as an attachment along with your resume.
• An appreciation of historical armour, weapon and garment construction- and the practical needs that should drive a design.
• A demonstrable understanding of concept art techniques.
• A good eye for composition and visual design principles.
• Excellent understanding of light and colour, silhouettes and value relationships.
• A strong sketching ability that can capture key ideas in the early stages of your work.
• Great communication skills

This is a fantastic opportunity to create a world-class game with an established, talented, and collaborative team at one of the world’s most exciting first-party game studios