Art Director - Mobile Casual F2P Games
UserWise Services · Remote, Poland
About The Role
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.
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.
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
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