Lead Cinematic Artist

About the Position

We are seeking a Lead Cinematic Artist to join our AAA game production team in Australia. This role focuses on creating high-quality, real-time cinematics that enhance the storytelling and visual appeal of our games.

Responsibilities

Leadership & Team Management

• Managing dedicated art teams across geographies or studios, emphasizing overall quality, productivity, and continuous team development.
• Lead and mentor a diverse team of artists, fostering their professional growth and artistic development.
• Conduct regular performance evaluations, providing constructive feedback and facilitating skill-building opportunities.
• Identify skill gaps within the team and implement training programs to enhance capabilities and artistic techniques.

Cinematic Creation

• Create high-quality, visually compelling real-time cinematics.
• Translate storyboards and scripts into compelling visual sequences.
• Set up cameras, composition, timing, and pacing to support storytelling.
• Develop cinematics optimized for real-time game engines.
• Troubleshoot and resolve creative and technical challenges.

Collaboration & Production

• Work closely with the Art Director to maintain the overall art direction.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams throughout the production pipeline to ensure artistic consistency and quality.
• Participate in reviews, feedback sessions, and iterative development processes.

Technical Art & Optimisation

• Ensure cinematics and cutscenes meet performance, memory, and platform-specific requirements across a variety of platforms.
• Collaborate closely with animation, environment, VFX, and technical art teams to integrate assets and pipelines.
• Apply a strong understanding of cinematics for real-time performance.
• Maintain consistency in quality while adhering to technical constraints and engine limitations.
• Troubleshoot and resolve creative and technical challenges.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, tools, and workflows.
• Contribute ideas and improvements to pipelines and production processes.
• Continuously push the visual quality and innovation of game art production.

Requirements

Required Skills and Experience

• Experience leading art teams and projects.
• Exceptional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to inspire and guide a team towards achieving project goals.
• A keen eye for detail and strong observation skills.
• Extensive experience as a Cinematic Artist within the video game industry, with a strong portfolio showcasing high-quality real-time game cinematics and cutscenes.
• Extensive knowledge of Unreal Engine 5, including Sequencer, cameras, and rendering pipelines.
• Strong understanding of lighting, composition, colour theory, pacing, and visual storytelling.
• Extensive knowledge of game development pipelines and the ability to adapt artistic styles to suit various game genres and target platforms.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Passion for gaming and a strong understanding of market trends, player expectations, and gaming cultures cross platforms.
• Experience successfully guiding and communicating with other art teams to ensure artistic vision and asset quality are maintained from concept through to final in-game implementation.

We Offer

• Competitive salary
• Opportunity to work with some of the world's largest Publishers and most popular AAA games
• Fun and cooperative work atmosphere
• Collaboration with a diversely skilled team

About the Company

We're constantly working with some of the world's largest Publishers and most popular AAA games. Here in Australia, we have studios located in Adelaide, Brisbane, and Melbourne, employing about two hundred of Australia's leading game professionals. Our studio brands operating under the Keywords Studios group are Tantalus Media (Vic, SA, Qld), and Liquid Development (Vic, SA, Qld).

Liquid Development was founded in 2000 and is the largest outsourcing art studio in North America. Liquid Development is producing work at the forefront of modern game production, and the demand for our services continues to grow. Our team has contributed to AAA titles within the Halo, Mass Effect, Borderlands, and Call of Duty franchises.

Liquid Development expanded into Australia in 2026, and now consists of 30+ talented creatives across Australia. We offer a fun and cooperative work atmosphere, where collaboration is encouraged among a diversely skilled team, to remain on the cutting edge of content creation. Liquid Development collaborates closely with Tantalus Media - together we create full scope projects for some of the biggest game publishers in the world.

These positions are preferably based in either Adelaide, Brisbane, or Melbourne. Other Australian cities will be considered as remote based.

Additional Information

If you'd like to know more about Keywords Studios, we recommend visiting our corporate site HERE.

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