We are hiring skilled sketch artists to create hand-drawn character sketches from source video frames for an AI training dataset. For each source frame, you will deliver a package of seven sketch variants: a rough gesture pass, a detailed construction pass, three expression passes, a background pass, and two object-swap passes — supplied as PNG files with structured metadata.

The work rewards precision and consistency. A character's identity, pose, proportions, and camera angle must remain stable across all seven variants, while the linework continues to read as a confident hand-drawn storyboard sketch rather than a traced reproduction.

Responsibilities

- Produce all seven required sketch variants per source frame at the assigned difficulty level
- Create roughs as true stick-figure blocking: line of action, head volume, limb direction, and a facial crosshair at eye level, without adding body volumes, ears, hair, or accessories.
- Draw clean detailed linework with accurate anatomy, clothing and accessory structure, proportions, and perspective, removing all construction lines.
- Reproduce the source expression faithfully, then draw a second assigned expression from the approved emotion categories.
- Add simple, perspective-matched backgrounds in medium grey linework that remain secondary to the character, extending the ground plane to the bottom of the canvas.
- Replace or add objects from the approved object list, positioned according to the character's left and right rather than the viewer's.
- Apply the correct shading level: pure line art, a single flat tone, or a full light– midtone–shadow structure.
- Complete metadata for every package, including pose description, view angle, expression types, object and hand placement, background description, filenames, and bounding-box coordinates.
- Export to specification: PNG, RGB, 300 DPI, solid white background, lowercase underscored filenames, and layers named to match each variant.

Education and experience:

- A diploma or degree in animation, illustration,



fine arts, visual communication, or graphic design, or equivalent demonstrable skill through portfolio and professional work.
- Typically 2 or more years of drawing experience in a production pipeline.
- Relevant backgrounds include 2D animation, layout or in-betweening, storyboarding and animatics for film, advertising or gaming, comics and inking, character design, and visual development.

Required skills:

- Solid figure drawing fundamentals: gesture, line of action, construction, anatomy, and perspective.
- A portfolio demonstrating rough-to-clean progression, not finished illustration alone.
- Confident single-stroke linework. Scratchy, shaky, or multi-stroke edges are the most common cause of rejected work on this project.
- Ability to draw human, animal, anthropomorphic, and stylised characters while preserving species silhouette and recognisable features.
- Expression work that changes only the face, leaving body structure and storytelling intent untouched, and that stays readable in side profile.
- Flat and three-value shading applied without muddying form.
- Careful attention to written specification, and the discipline to cross-check all seven variants before submission.

Preferred:

- Experience in data annotation or AI training data, background and environment layout, and previous work assessed against a formal QC rubric. Comfort with steady, high-volume batch delivery.

Tools:

Adobe Photoshop using the default Kyle brush set, on a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet or display.

Quality standard:

Submissions are assessed against a formal error taxonomy. A single critical error, two major errors, or four minor errors will fail a task. Critical errors include an unrecognisable character, missing body parts, a missing or unreadable required expression, compositional drift across variants, a missing or duplicated variant, a non-white canvas, absent shading on Medium or Hard tasks, and a missing facial crosshair where one is required.

Traced or mechanically copied linework is recorded as a major error.

Work Location: Remote

📌 Character Sketch Artist (India)
🏢 Vaidik Eduservices
📍 India