Game Art Director 2D Mobile Games

About the Role

We're a seed-funded gaming startup with one published game. We make polished casual puzzle games for players around the world. We need a hands-on Game Art Director to set the visual direction of our games and then build it. You should be strong at concept art and also at production-level 2D work. The goal is warm, stylized, highly polished worlds with the kind of appeal you see in the top casual puzzle and renovation games. This is a player-coach role. You'll set the art direction and guide other artists, but you'll also spend a lot of your time making game art yourself.

What You'll Do

• Own the art direction, visual identity and quality bar of the game.

• Create concept art and set the visual language for environments, characters, props and other assets.

• Create stylized 2D and isometric environments, backgrounds and props, and guide others doing the same.

• Make game art yourself, from concept to final production.

• Write the style guides and set color palettes, lighting, composition and visual standards.

• Review artwork and improve it through feedback, paintovers and your own iterations.

• Guide internal and external artists and keep their work consistent across the game.

• Work with Game Design, Product and Development so the art supports gameplay and the player experience.

• Set up AI-assisted art workflows that speed up exploration, iteration and production without hurting quality or style consistency.

What We're Looking For

• Experience in 2D art for mobile games, ideally casual or puzzle games.

• Concept art and visual development skills across environments, characters, props and world-building.

• A portfolio of stylized, warm, polished 2D game art.

• Experience with isometric environments and perspective.

• Solid fundamentals in composition, color, lighting, perspective, form and visual storytelling.

• Advanced Photoshop and digital painting skills, and the ability to make production-quality assets yourself.

• You've defined and maintained the visual direction of a game before.

• You've made games for international mobile players.

• You can work as an Art Director and as an individual contributor at the same time.

• Deep hands-on use of AI in art creation: generative AI, image-to-image, inpainting, style control, iteration, and fitting AI into a professional art workflow.

• You can use AI as part of the creative process and still keep your artistic judgement, consistency and final production quality.

Nice to Have

• Casual, puzzle, match-3, renovation or decoration games.

• Stable Diffusion, Flux, ComfyUI or similar AI art tools.

• AI model or style training, LoRAs or other ways of keeping visuals consistent.

• Unity and mobile game art pipelines.

• 3D-to-2D workflows in Blender or similar tools.

• Working in a startup or small multidisciplinary game team.

Please note: This position is for one of Playdawn's clients, and successful candidates will be hired directly by the client, not by Playdawn.

Our client is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. They are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where all individuals are treated with respect and have equal access to opportunities, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, age, disability, or other protected characteristics. They believe that diversity fuels innovation and creativity, and they strive to create an environment where everyone can thrive and contribute to shared success.