Lead Character Artist

Job Description

At Kabam, we’re constantly raising the bar of excellence in free-to-play gaming. We hire for passion and diversity so that we can triumph in our collective skill. Our teams are made up of a fusion of personalities and interests bound together by a collaborative nature, fun-loving culture, and a drive to do what it takes to make great games. And this is where you come in…

The Lead Character Artist  is responsible for overseeing the character design and creation process from concept to animation and  final integration. This role ensures that our games feature compelling and visually stunning characters, animation and VFX. They will lead a team of artists both internally and externally and work closely with various departments to bring our characters to life. They understand the Character creation process along with the technical and artistic constraints. They partner with designers and engineers to realize characters that are meaningful to players and executed at high quality in the game.  

This role is a full-time, on-site position based 5 days a week at our Downtown Vancouver studio.

In this role, you can expect to:

Key Accountabilities

Oversee Character Creation Pipeline:

• Supervise the entire pipeline, from concept through modeling, materials, textures, props, animation, VFX, and integration.
• Ensure characters support narrative, artistic style, and emotional tone.
• Collaborate with Design, Creative, Engineering, and other disciplines.
• Maintain consistent quality across all character assets.
• Seek efficiency in cost, resources, and workflow.

Set Visual Standards:

• Define quality benchmarks for 2D elements (models, textures, animations, VFX).
• Guide team prototypes and visual targets to establish identity.
• Translate feedback from leadership  and stakeholders.
• Uphold consistency and polish across the roster.

Maintain Technical Efficiencies:

• Partner with technical teams to improve pipelines, tools, and workflows.
• Ensure characters are delivered, integrated, and meet quality bars.
• Champion best practices (texture sheet size, poly count, memory budgets).
• Seek automation and streamlining to balance quality with efficiency.

Leadership:

• Advocate for hiring key positions and source key talent.
• Manage a team of animators, 2D artists, VFX artists and other character-related positions.
• Manage and contract external artists as needed to supplement internal capacity and capability.
• Foster a collaborative, high-performing team aligned with the studio and product vision.

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• Post-Secondary degree or certification in related field.
• 5+ years experience in a leadership role in Character art/animation in the gaming industry. Experience working with IP partners preferred.
• Strong proficiency in 2D illustration,  and vector-based animated/stylized character design.
• Strong knowledge of industry-standard software such as Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Animate, and Spine.
• Strong knowledge of proportion, anatomy and animation principles as applied to 2D animation.
• Solid understanding of Character rigging, weighting, and animation.
• Solid understanding of real-time limitations for 2D assets.
• Familiarity with game engines, such as Unity or Unreal Engine. Understanding of Unity shaders, VFX/animation nice to have but not required.
• Exceptional leadership and team management abilities.
• Excellent problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Effective communication and collaboration skills.
• Passion for gaming and a deep appreciation for the importance of character design in storytelling. Character concept design, storyboarding, and/or layout design is beneficial but not required.

Our success is due to the hard work of our people. We share our success with our people through flexible benefits and reward programs, sweet swag, snacks, and more. Here’s a look at some of the support we provide our people:

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• Commuter Benefit: we believe in the power of in-person collaboration, and want to support you in making it work for you! We provide a flexible, monthly cash allowance to help cover the costs of transit, parking, or even personal logistics like childcare and pet care.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: this program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion.
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Whether it’s summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, or watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Kabammers have a dedicated paid day off every year to volunteer to a cause close to their hearts. Some teams even band together for group volunteer days off-site!

$125,000 - $160,000 a year

The typical hiring range listed above is specific to candidates located in Vancouver. The salary will be determined based on your knowledge, skills and competencies, and you’ll have room to grow after you join! 

If you’re interested in the position but your expectations don’t fully align with the provided range, we still encourage you to apply! Considerations may be made based on your experience level.

Excited by this opportunity? Kabam is dedicated to growing our diverse and inclusive workforce, so if your past experience doesn’t perfectly match the listed requirements we encourage you to apply anyways - you could be a great fit for this or other positions.

We invite you to apply now and start the conversation with us. Together, we can create and support some of the best games ever made and entertain the world!

About Kabam

Kabam is a world leader in developing entertaining, immersive, and highly social multiplayer games, bringing high-quality graphics, next-generation technology, and revolutionary gameplay to players around the world.

Kabam’s games, Marvel Contest of Champions, Shop Titans, and more have generated hundreds of millions of downloads and have received multiple awards including Apple’s Editor’s Choice and Google Play’s Best Game of the Year.

Founded in 2006, Kabam has studios and offices in Vancouver & Montreal in Canada, and Los Angeles & San Francisco in the United States. Kabam is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Netmarble Games.