The Opportunity
UserWise is looking for an experienced Art Director to own and elevate the visual direction of a premium mobile Free-to-Play game based on a globally recognized entertainment IP.
This is a hands-on creative leadership role for someone with exceptional visual judgment, deep experience in mobile casual/F2P games, and the ability to lead a small multidisciplinary art team.
You will own the visual quality of the complete game experience across 2D, 3D, UI art, characters, environments, animation, VFX, lighting, and overall presentation. We are looking for someone who can evaluate how the entire game comes together on screen — not just individual assets — and raise the visual bar through clear direction, strong feedback, paintovers, mockups, references, and hands-on iteration when needed.
A key part of this role will be balancing the accessibility and readability of a premium casual mobile game with the spectacle, lighting, personality, excitement, and sense of occasion of a major entertainment property.
The ideal candidate also embraces AI-assisted creative workflows and understands how AI can amplify a talented art team by increasing exploration, accelerating iteration, and allowing artists to focus more time on high-value creative decisions.
What You'll Do
- Own and evolve the overall art direction and visual identity of the game.
- Establish and maintain a consistently high visual bar across 2D, 3D, UI, character art, environments, animation, VFX, lighting, and gameplay presentation.
- Ensure the game retains the accessibility of a premium casual title while delivering the stage presence, spectacle, energy, and entertainment value expected from a major IP.
- Review the game holistically and ensure all visual disciplines feel like part of the same cohesive experience.
- Identify areas that feel generic, inconsistent, underdeveloped, or disconnected from the core fantasy and drive them toward stronger solutions.
- Provide clear, actionable visual feedback through art reviews, paintovers, mockups, reference boards, and direct iteration.
- Directly manage and mentor a small multidisciplinary art team spanning 2D, 3D, UI art, characters, environments, and VFX.
- Set clear expectations, priorities, and quality standards while building a healthy culture of constructive critique and iteration.
- Partner with Production on art priorities, capacity, dependencies, and delivery.
- Collaborate closely with Creative Direction, Game Design, UX, Product, Engineering, and Production.
- Work with UI/UX to ensure usability and clarity are supported by strong composition, hierarchy, visual storytelling, and presentation.
- Guide VFX and animation toward a coherent language for anticipation, impact, transitions, rewards, celebration, and game feel.
- Translate established IP and brand pillars into a modern mobile-game visual identity that feels authentic without becoming generic.
- Participate in recruiting, portfolio reviews, and hiring as the art team evolves.
AI-Assisted Art Direction
AI-assisted creative workflows are an important part of how UserWise approaches game development.
The Art Director will be expected to actively champion and help evolve the use of AI across the art team.
You will:
- Explore and incorporate AI tools where they can accelerate ideation, concept development, visualization, reference creation, iteration, and production.
- Help artists use AI as a creative multiplier, not as a substitute for artistic judgment, craftsmanship, or ownership.
- Identify opportunities to reduce repetitive production work and increase the amount of time the team spends on high-value creative decisions.
- Establish workflows that combine AI-assisted exploration with traditional 2D, 3D, UI, animation, VFX, and engine-based production.
- Evaluate emerging tools and techniques based on whether they genuinely improve quality, speed, or creative range.
- Maintain strong artistic standards, visual consistency, and IP integrity as these workflows evolve.
We are looking for someone who is excited to actively shape how AI-assisted workflows can augment the creativity, capabilities, and output of a talented art team.
Requirements
What We're Looking For
- Significant experience as an Art Director, Associate Art Director, Lead Artist, or equivalent visual leadership role in games.
- A portfolio demonstrating an exceptionally strong visual bar and clear artistic judgment.
- Shipped experience on mobile Free-to-Play games.
- Strong experience with casual or mass-market mobile games.
- Proven experience managing and directing multidisciplinary artists.
- Demonstrated ability to direct visual quality across multiple disciplines.
- Strong visual judgment across 2D character and concept art, UI, environments, 3D characters, animation, VFX, lighting, composition, color, and visual hierarchy.
- Ability to provide effective visual feedback through paintovers, mockups, references, or direct iteration.
- Strong understanding of how UI, art, animation, VFX, lighting, and audio combine to create game feel and emotional payoff.
- Experience working closely with UI/UX, game design, product, engineering, and production teams.
- Ability to balance a strong artistic point of view with readability, performance, technical constraints, and production realities.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to explain not only what should change visually, but why.
- Professional fluency in spoken and written English is required.
- Comfortable working in Unity or closely within a real-time game-engine production environment.
- Comfortable managing a distributed, international team.
- Genuine enthusiasm for adopting and advancing AI-assisted creative workflows.
Nice to Have
- Experience working with major entertainment, television, film, toy, or other licensed IP.
- Experience adapting an established brand into a distinctive mobile-game visual identity.
- Experience with game-show, social, party, board, puzzle, Match-3, coin-looter, or adjacent mass-market genres.
- Experience on games with strong progression, characters, collection systems, rewards, and highly expressive moment-to-moment feedback.
- Experience developing art-direction bibles, style guides, visual systems, and scalable LiveOps content standards.
- Experience with generative AI, AI-assisted 3D workflows, or other emerging creative technologies.
Portfolio
A strong portfolio is essential for this role.
We are particularly interested in portfolios that demonstrate:
- Shipped mobile and F2P work
- Casual or mass-market visual sensibility
- Art direction across complete game experiences rather than isolated assets
- Multidisciplinary direction across 2D, 3D, UI, characters, environments, animation, or VFX
- Paintovers, visual development, style exploration, or examples showing how you elevated the work of a team
- The ability to create a cohesive visual identity across multiple disciplines
Where possible, please identify your specific role and contribution to the projects shown.
Benefits
Why Join UserWise
- Help bring a globally recognized IP to life with real brand reach and growth potential.
- Own and elevate the visual direction of a flagship mobile game across 2D, 3D, UI, animation, VFX, and presentation.
- Help shape modern, AI-assisted creative workflows that amplify the capabilities of a talented art team.
- Work with a veteran-led team in a lean, high-ownership environment.
- High visibility and direct creative impact on the product.
- 100% remote, flexible work with a small, passionate, execution-focused team.
Benefits
- Market-competitive compensation
- Paid Time Off
- Performance Bonus
- Annual Performance Reviews
