Art Director

We’re an independent games studio best known for creating Phasmophobia, enjoyed by millions of players worldwide. Our team is passionate, creative, and collaborative and we’re looking for someone equally enthusiastic about games to join our growing team.

Kinetic Games is looking for an experienced Art Director to lead the artistic execution of our games and help develop the art department as the studio continues to grow.

• →Own the overall visual execution, working within the creative vision established by the Game Director and wider creative leadership.
• →Translate high-level creative direction into clear visual targets, references, guidelines and actionable direction for the art team.
• →Lead the studio's art discipline across areas including environment art, character art, animation, VFX, UI art, concept art and technical art.
• →Maintain a consistent and appropriate quality bar across all visual content, including regularly play testing builds to see the final integration.
• →Review work throughout development and provide clear, constructive and actionable feedback.
• →Work closely with Technical Art and Engineering to establish efficient pipelines, workflows, tools and technical standards.
• →Work alongside Production to scope art requirements, identify dependencies, estimate workloads and ensure art milestones are achievable.
• →Establish and continuously improve art processes as the studio and projects grow in scale.
• →Develop standards for areas such as asset creation, optimisation, outsourcing, review processes and implementation.
• →Mentor and develop artists and art leadership, providing guidance on both creative and professional development.
• →Contribute to art recruitment, team structure and workforce planning.
• →Manage and provide direction to external art partners where required.

• At least 1 shipped titles working on AAA, AA or similarly high-production-value titles in a senior art leadership position.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary art teams through development and shipment of commercially released games.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating an excellent understanding of visual design, composition, lighting, colour, environment design and overall artistic quality.
• Strong understanding of modern game development pipelines and the process of taking artwork from concept through to final implementation.
• Good understanding of real-time rendering, optimisation and the technical constraints involved in producing art for games.
• Experience working closely with Technical Artists and Engineers to establish scalable art pipelines and workflows.
• Strong leadership and people-management skills, with experience developing senior artists and discipline leads.
• Experience evaluating scope, complexity and production requirements for art content.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across both creative and technical disciplines.
• Ability to balance visual ambition with production realities, technical limitations and project schedules.

• Experience building or significantly growing an art department.
• Experience working on live-service games or games supported through substantial post-launch development.
• Experience developing games across PC and console platforms.
• Strong knowledge of Unity or Unreal Engine.
• Experience working with external development partners and outsourcing studios.
• Experience establishing art pipelines for a studio transitioning from smaller-scale development into larger productions.
• Experience with horror games or creating atmospheric, realistic environments.