About the role
About the Role
IGG Canada is a premium mobile game and video production studio seeking a Technical Artist to bridge the gap between art and technology. The role involves working closely 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 ideal candidate combines strong artistic sensibility with hands-on technical expertise, understands the performance constraints of mobile platforms, and enjoys finding creative solutions to technical challenges.
Position Details
- Role: 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 and commensurate with skills and experience)
Hiring Process
- Resume and portfolio/showreel review
- Art test to demonstrate skills and approach
- Interviews to meet the team and discuss experience and qualifications
- Professional reference check
- Formal offer subject to reference check results and internal approval
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
- 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, to achieve specific artistic styles.
- 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 by the team.
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, including dissolve, distortion, blending, UV animation, or similar techniques.
- Ability to work with artists to achieve the desired visual style and appearance of characters, environments, and visual effects.
- 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 while maintaining visual quality.
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 to solve art-related technical challenges.
- Ability to balance artistic requirements with technical limitations and production deadlines.
- Strong communication, problem-solving, and collaboration skills.
- Proactive approach to identifying problems and developing practical solutions.
- Familiarity with AI-assisted tools and workflows for art production is a plus.
- Strong interest in mobile games and familiarity with mobile game visual styles and player experience.
- 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, such as SRP Batcher and GPU Instancing.
- Experience developing tools, scripts, or Unity Editor extensions to support art production.
- Experience creating procedural textures or visual effects using Substance Designer.
- Experience with Maya, 3ds Max, Substance Designer, or Substance Painter.
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.
- Regular working hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., including a paid lunch break.
- On-site entertainment facilities and gym.
- Casual dress code.
- Employee discounts at nearby restaurants and cafés through company partnerships.
- Employee-led clubs, social activities, and community initiatives supported by company funding.
- Snacks and drinks provided.