(Senior) Tech Artist

Big Run Studios creates cutting edge mobile games for traditionally underserved audiences. Established in 2019 and headquartered in Oakland, CA, we are a group of game industry veterans who are passionate about delivering high quality casual competitive games that entertain players across all mobile platforms. We’re proud to work with the biggest brands and leverage the newest technologies across all stages of development. We believe that success is built on three core values – Strong Player Communities, Experiences that Amaze, and making Games as a Lifestyle.

Position Summary:

As a technical artist you will keep the artistic vision intact while working within the limits of the software systems used on a video game production. You are also the connective tissue for the creative and engineering aspects of game development. You will work closely with the Game Designer, Lead Artist and Lead Programmer, advising on technical resources, researching new techniques, maintaining tools and pipelines, and preparing digital files of finished artwork to run efficiently without visual degradation. This role gets to do a little bit of everything from VFX elements, to light weight rigging and animation, to scripting and tool making, to pipeline development.

Responsibilities:

• Developing and maintaining art resources, pipelines, and work flows in collaboration with a cross functional team.
• Solving complex technical issues during development
• Researching and developing technical tools for a project
• Working within the limits of the game engine, curating file sizes and loading speeds, and optimizing environments.
• Writing custom software specific to the needs of the game which will work with industry standard scripting languages
• Porting art to the game engine
• Creation of VFX elements and basic animations.
• Maintaining technical documentation

Requirements:

• 5 years of experience as a Technical Artist or related art role
• Creative mindset and ability to overcome technical challenges
• Excellent interpersonal skills help facilitate work and collaboration between creative and technical teams
• Solid understanding of game systems and the game development process 
• In depth understanding of art and animation pipelines
• Experience with shader writing, rendering and post-effects
• High level artistic skills – proportion, color, composition
• Knowledge of coding languages such as C#, JavaScript, or Python

Required Software Experience:

• Unity
• Adobe Photoshop 

Nice to haves:

• Experience with AR development
• Experience with Deep Fake
• Blender / Maya / 3D Studio Max
• Unreal Engine
• SourceTree
• GitHub
• Adobe After Effects