Lead VFX Artist

Overview

1047 Games began with the simple principle that people should have fun while making great games. Bucking convention and driven by a passion to create the ultimate gaming experience, Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian founded 1047 Games in 2017 in their Stanford dorm room. Their love for arena shooters of the past drove them to create Splitgate, a unique sci-fi first-person shooter that adds portal guns to upend the genre. 

What started as two computer science majors putting portals into a first-person shooter for a project demo has evolved into a VC-backed company which has raised more than $120MM in funding. `

At 1047 Games, you’ll find a permanently remote, dedicated team of top-tier talent from some of the world’s biggest gaming and tech companies who share our founders’ vision. Grit, ingenuity, a desire to have fun, and a start up mentality define our crew. We are currently working on a brand new shooter in the Splitgate universe.

What We're Looking For

• A strong aesthetic eye and technical proficiency

• A passionate artist: You love to take on difficult, seemingly impossible problems and dig in to find creative ways to solve them

• A hard worker: You love to put in the extra effort, because you enjoy your work and know the impact of finishing the tasks at hand

• A mentor: Someone who can help the VFX team learn, grow, and excel

• Passion for gaming: You can recognize what separates exceptional games from the average ones. You understand the mindset of gamers which enables you to create and implement features that will further benefit the game

Responsibilities:

• Ensure that VFX across the game is AAA quality and complements/fits the art style, elevating the entire game

• Lead, educate, and mentor the VFX team

• Research and provide creative input to inform and develop VFX solutions.

• Work with our design, environment, and writing teams to support gameplay while upholding our established art style.

• Work with our art leadership to support the game vision, provide/receive feedback, and improve by participating in regular team events such as reviews and scrums, with the goal of creating high-quality VFX.

• Stay current with and exhibit a high degree of technical knowledge about the current state of the industry in real-time Visual Effects.

• Educate and Articulate VFX concepts to our game team through presentations including members of other disciplines, such as Engineering and Production.

• Explore different visual looks through reference-gathering and prototype development in-engine with the intent of defining visual effects direction.

• Work with Technical Artists and engineers to set technical standards and production processes to guide VFX work and ensure visual quality while also meeting performance standards.

• Create style-guides to describe how VFX will contribute to the visual direction of the title.

• Directly create proof-of-concept work in pre-production with the intent of creating estimates for a lighting team to replicate in production.

• Create test case levels for performance testing to establish performance benchmarks with a Tech Artist.

Required Skills:

• Ability to make incredible-yet-performant real-time VFX using particle systems, sprites, and 3D meshes.

• Great communication and the ability to collaborate with fellow devs

• Ability to lead and mentor artists and help them achieve goals

• Good command of animation principles and timing.

• Ability to be self-starting and flexibility to work with a global team

Nice to Have:

• Unreal Engine experience (UE5 Preferred)

• Houdini, Embergen or Substance Designer Experience

• Experience with physics simulation including fluids, rigid body, soft body and cloth as well

• Experience creating visual filters, post-FX, and screen space effects
  

• Unreal Engine Chaos experience

• Competence with shader development (either HLSL or graph-based) for development of pixel and vertex shaders to enhance visual effects and systems

• Familiarity with Confluence / JIRA / Perforce