About the role
About IGG Canada
IGG Canada is a premium mobile game and video production studio located at 988 West Broadway, Vancouver, Canada. The studio provides a spacious, high-tech, and inspiring environment for creativity and collaboration. IGG Canada is a division of IGG (I Got Games), a global interactive digital entertainment company that specializes in the development and operation of mobile games. Founded in 2006, IGG has studios and operations across China, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, and Canada.
About the Role
The Technical Artist acts as a bridge between art and technology within the mobile game development team. Responsibilities include working with artists, designers, and programmers to develop stylized shaders for characters and visual effects, optimize visual assets, and improve art production workflows in Unity. The role requires balancing artistic sensibility with technical expertise, specifically focusing on mobile platform constraints.
- Position: Intermediate Technical Artist
- Project: 3D simulation mobile game
- Report to: Lead 3D Artist
- Hiring Level: Mid-Level
- Start Date: ASAP
- Location: 988 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K7 (Fully on-site)
- Salary Range: $63,000 - $85,000 annually before tax (negotiable)
Employment Terms
- Less than 1 year of relevant experience: Initial 3-month contract
- 1-3 years of relevant experience: Initial 1-year contract
- More than 3 years of relevant experience: Permanent position
- Note: Contract durations are subject to individual assessment and may vary based on specific qualifications and experience.
Job Responsibilities
Art Integration and Production
- Collaborate with artists and designers to develop and implement stylized visuals for characters, environments, and visual effects in Unity.
- Prepare, integrate, and optimize 2D and 3D assets for real-time mobile game development.
- Set up, refine, and maintain materials, textures, lighting, visual effects, and reusable prefabs.
- Polish and troubleshoot art assets in Unity, ensuring visual consistency and technical quality throughout production.
Shader Development and Rendering
- Design, create, and maintain stylized shaders and materials for characters and visual effects using Amplify Shader Editor or Unity Shader Graph.
- Develop custom shader effects, including distortion, blend modes, vertex displacement, dissolve, and UV animation.
- Collaborate with artists to develop and refine the visual appearance of characters and FX while maintaining mobile performance budgets.
- Review and optimize rendering performance, addressing issues related to draw calls, transparency, overdraw, shader complexity, and texture memory usage.
Technical Support and Workflow Improvement
- Support artists with Unity workflows, asset setup, import settings, materials, shaders, and other technical requirements.
- Collaborate with artists, designers, and programmers to identify and resolve art-related technical issues.
- Identify and implement improvements to art workflows, asset pipelines, and production processes.
- Research, evaluate, and test new tools and techniques to improve visual quality and production efficiency.
- Provide technical guidance to artists and develop practical solutions that balance artistic goals, technical constraints, and production schedules.
- Proactively identify and address technical challenges while meeting project deadlines.
- Perform additional tasks as assigned.
Requirements
Professional Experience
- 2–3 years of professional experience in Technical Art, 3D Art, or a related role within the game industry.
- Strong knowledge of Unity and real-time 3D production workflows.
- Good understanding of the 3D art production pipeline, including modeling, texturing, animation, and asset integration.
- Strong artistic sensibility and an interest in using technical solutions to achieve high-quality visual results.
Shaders, Rendering & Visual Effects
- Hands-on experience creating and implementing shaders and materials in Unity using Unity Shader Graph or Amplify Shader Editor.
- Good understanding of shaders, materials, textures, lighting, and real-time rendering.
- Experience creating or supporting stylized visual effects (dissolve, distortion, blending, UV animation).
- Ability to work with artists to achieve the desired visual style.
- Understanding of basic real-time rendering and mobile performance considerations (draw calls, transparency, overdraw, shader complexity, texture memory).
- Experience optimizing art assets, shaders, and visual effects for performance.
Technical & Collaborative Skills
- Experience integrating, troubleshooting, and polishing art assets in Unity.
- Ability to identify and resolve technical issues related to art assets, materials, shaders, and visual effects.
- Experience collaborating with artists, designers, and programmers.
- Ability to balance artistic requirements with technical limitations and production deadlines.
- Strong communication, problem-solving, and collaboration skills.
- Proactive approach to problem-solving.
- Familiarity with AI-assisted tools is a plus.
- Strong interest in mobile games.
- Must be legally authorized to work in Canada without requiring employer sponsorship.
Bonus Skills
- Experience working on stylized or cartoon-style mobile games.
- Experience with Unity's Universal Render Pipeline (URP).
- Ability to write or modify custom shaders using HLSL/ShaderLab.
- Understanding of advanced Unity rendering optimization techniques (SRP Batcher and GPU Instancing).
- Experience developing tools, scripts, or Unity Editor extensions.
- Experience creating procedural textures or visual effects using Substance Designer.
- Experience with Maya, 3ds Max, Substance Designer, or Substance Painter.
Compensation and Benefits
- 13 days of accrued paid vacation and 5 paid sick days annually.
- Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and prescription coverage (after 3 months).
- Active Living Benefit and Training/Development fee reimbursement (after 3 months).
- Paid statutory holidays.
- Paid holiday closure between Christmas and New Year's.
- RRSP matching (after 1 year).
- Monthly commuter allowance (after 3 months).
- Monthly team lunches.
- Festival bonuses and gifts.
- Gifts for employees’ children.
- Employee referral bonuses.
Office & Team Perks
- Bike parking and company-paid parking.
- Working hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (includes paid lunch break).
- On-site entertainment facilities and gym.
- Casual dress code.
- Employee discounts at nearby restaurants and cafés.
- Company-funded employee-led clubs and social activities.
- Snacks and drinks provided.
Hiring Process
- Resume and portfolio/showreel review.
- Art test to demonstrate skills and approach.
- Interviews to meet the team.
- Professional reference check.
- Formal offer subject to satisfactory reference check results and internal approval.