Lightforge Games is a new studio bringing the roleplaying back into RPGs.

We're looking for people of all levels, backgrounds, voices, identities, and perspectives to join us on our journey. We strongly believe the key to making a better game, better company, and better industry begins with a diverse set of voices.

We value transparency, empathy, and personal growth, and we believe that making games is both an art and a science.

As a fully remote company, we're open to teammates living nearly anywhere. We practice nonlinear workdays, allowing everyone to determine how and when they work best. We also follow an open salary policy where all pay details are shared with everyone. This holds us accountable to fair pay.

Lightforge Games is very much a work-in-progress, and you can help shape who we are. Come join us to build something special!

Learn more about us here.

Please note - While our corporate address is in Raleigh, all positions at Lightforge Games are remote

Lightforge Games is looking for a Lead 3D Character Artist!

We are looking for an artist with a proven track record in creating appealing, stylized, AAA quality 3D game characters, who also enjoys the collaborative environment of a great team. In this role, you will be critical in helping fine-tuning the look and style of all characters, character attire, and creatures. In addition to creating models and helping with direction for outsourced art, we will also be looking to your experience feedback on all aspects of our art pipeline.

By joining us at this early stage, you’ll play a big role in helping to guide the direction of our project and company. We’re looking for an artist with proven experience who can grow with the company.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Art Director to develop and enhance the look and style of the game’s characters, armors and creatures, defining the approach and pipeline from start to finish.
• Embrace organic feedback, loose ideas, and rough concepts with the ability to make them your own, adding your creativity and artistry.
• Collaborate with tech art to refine constraints for all character customization related systems.
• Expand upon a robust character creation and layered armor system that covers a multitude of body types, modular parts, and face options with a focus on blendshapes, with varying geometry and texture setups.
• Be a leader in identifying, determining, implementing and resolving necessary parameters and technology to meet our game’s vision.
• Work within a modular pipeline with procedural PBR texturing, identifying and possibly contributing to our shader needs, while collaborating with tech art and engineering to achieve a high level of customization.
• Set the standards for Character sculpts, re-topos, UVs, bakes, and textures for the project with your artistic style and expert efficiency in these areas.
• Help optimize the production and organization of an expandable library of character art.
• Create proxy models in order to help support testing of new systems as they are developed.
• Help identify internal full time hires and external outsourcing partners, especially for character art needs.
• Establish and lead a character team with in-house and outsourced partners, giving mentorship, guidance, and artistic and technical feedback.
• Review and provide organized and concisely written feedback to internal and outsourced character art team members, helping to ensure that all 3D assets are achieving our established quality and style standards.
• Work closely with our animation and rigging teams to ensure character assets will deform naturally and believably.
• Outside of art, contribute to Lightforge Games' direction and values.

Requirements

• Portfolio that represents a strong ability to sculpt, with a clear knowledge of how to properly retopologize, and texture high quality, game ready character assets.
• Excellent stylized modeling abilities (human faces, body types, sculpted clothing, creatures) showing fluency in stylized art.
• Passion for creating characters, gear, and creatures that reflect a fantasy world setting.
• Solid hard-surface modeling skills (armor, weapons).
• Fluent understanding of human and animal anatomies and physiologies.
• Experience working with modular assets.
• Understanding of working within the limits of existing rigs.
• Fundamental understanding of color and color theory.
• An understanding of PBR workflows.
• Expert knowledge of game development 3D programs.
• Strong familiarity with UE4 or UE5 development.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work with internal and external team members.
• Self-motivated and proactive, with the ability to work remotely while collaborating with a team.
• Great organizational and analytical skills in regards to art creation.

Pluses

• 2D or 3D concept art ability.
• Experience authoring shaders for characters such as skin, eyes, hair, etc.
• Knowledge of a character creator pipeline, working with morph targets.
• Familiarity with procedural content creation using Houdini or similar techniques.
• Interest in sometimes creating 3D environments, weapons, props, and points of interest.
• Experience working on live-service games.

Please Note: Lightforge Games is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate and welcome diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment.