A lead artist's primary responsibility is to guide the artists on a project in order to maintain the vision and quality set by the art director during pre-production.
Lead artists handle the technical aspects of the art team such as art processes, tools, geometric budgets, texture budgets, task definitions, and scheduling of tasks. They also communicate with the lead programmer and the producer to identify risk in the production pipeline. The lead takes the burden of artist management and protects the art team from counter-productivity. Qualifications for the position include a high school diploma or a GED along with experience in a related field. However, individuals with a bachelor's degree or a master's degree in fine arts or a related field may be given preference. Essential skills include interpersonal, organizational, creativity, and communication.
The average hourly salary for the position is $53.34, which equates to $110,940 annually. The career is expected to grow in the near future and create new job opportunities across the United States.
How to Become a Lead Artist
What is a Lead Artist
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Lead Artist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $46.69 an hour? That's $97,123 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 4% and produce 3,000 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Lead Artist Do
There are certain skills that many Lead Artists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed Artistic talent, Communication skills and Computer skills.
How To Become a Lead Artist
If you're interested in becoming a Lead Artist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 73.6% of Lead Artists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 5.3% of Lead Artists have master's degrees. Even though most Lead Artists have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a Lead Artist. When we researched the most common majors for a Lead Artist, we found that they most commonly earn Bachelor's Degree degrees or Associate Degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on Lead Artist resumes include Master's Degree degrees or High School Diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a Lead Artist. In fact, many Lead Artist jobs require experience in a role such as Artist. Meanwhile, many Lead Artists also have previous career experience in roles such as 3D Artist or Senior Artist.
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Lead Artist Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a Lead Artist can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as Art Director, progress to a title such as Creative Director and then eventually end up with the title Creative Director.
Lead Artist Jobs You Might Like
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Average Salary for a Lead Artist
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Choose From 10+ Customizable Lead Artist Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Lead Artist templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Lead Artist resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Lead Artist Demographics
Lead Artist Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among Lead Artists, 30.5% of them are women, while 69.5% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among Lead Artists is White, which makes up 73.4% of all Lead Artists.
- The most common foreign language among Lead Artists is Spanish at 48.6%.
Find the best Lead Artist job for you
Lead Artist Jobs You Might Like
- High Paying Lead Artist Jobs - $141K and Up
- Work From Home Lead Artist Jobs
- Entry Level Lead Artist Jobs
- Part Time Lead Artist Jobs
- Actively Hiring
- No Degree Lead Artist Jobs
Top Colleges for Lead Artists
1. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
2. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
3. Duke University
Durham, NC • Private
4. New York University
New York, NY • Private
5. Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA • Private
6. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
7. University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX • Private
8. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
9. Northeastern University
Boston, MA • Private
10. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
Find the best Lead Artist job for you
Lead Artist Jobs You Might Like
- High Paying Lead Artist Jobs - $141K and Up
- Work From Home Lead Artist Jobs
- Entry Level Lead Artist Jobs
- Part Time Lead Artist Jobs
- Actively Hiring
- No Degree Lead Artist Jobs
Online Courses For Lead Artist That You May Like
How to texture weapons and assets for your game props in the classic hand-painted texturing style!...
Learn to create game environments. Draw concept art, create 3D models, texture in Substance Painter and build in Unity...
Become an exquisite game designer and start creating game art today!...
Top Skills For a Lead Artist
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 14.4% of Lead Artists listed Maya on their resume, but soft skills such as Artistic talent and Communication skills are important as well.
Best States For a Lead Artist
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a Lead Artist. The best states for people in this position are Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Delaware. Lead Artists make the most in Connecticut with an average salary of $140,582. Whereas in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, they would average $134,511 and $128,758, respectively. While Lead Artists would only make an average of $126,114 in Delaware, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Rhode Island
$134,511
Avg. Salary
2. New Hampshire
$128,758
Avg. Salary
3. Nevada
$125,525
Avg. Salary
How Do Lead Artist Rate Their Jobs?
Top Lead Artist Employers
We've made finding a great employer to work for easy by doing the hard work for you. We looked into employers that employ Lead Artists and discovered their number of Lead Artist opportunities and average salary. Through our research, we concluded that Electronic Arts was the best, especially with an average salary of $109,635. Activision Blizzard follows up with an average salary of $117,103, and then comes Microsoft with an average of $149,897. In addition, we know most people would rather work from home. So instead of having to change careers, we identified the best employers for remote work as a Lead Artist. The employers include Sony Interactive Entertainment Playstation, Cloud Imperium Games, and Cryptic Studios
Lead Artist Videos
