Character Artist

A character artist turns concept art into a finished in-game asset: high-poly sculpt, retopology to a game-ready mesh, UVs, PBR texturing, and the material and shader setup that makes skin, cloth and metal behave under the game's lighting. The silhouette has to hold up at gameplay distance, and the topology has to survive animation, so the role is judged on both looks and technical fitness.

The tool list is consistent across postings: ZBrush for sculpting, Maya, Blender or 3ds Max for modelling, Substance Painter for texturing. Hand-off matters as much as craft, because riggers and animators inherit whatever the mesh allows.

Next to it, a concept artist decides what the character looks like before it exists in three dimensions, and a rigging artist builds the skeleton and deformation that makes it move. Character art is the step in between, and the one that defines how close the camera can get.