Lighting Artist

Job Details
Job Location: Undisclosed
Salary Range: Undisclosed
Lighting Artist
Deck Nine Games is currently hiring a full-time, remote Lighting Artist for an unannounced narrative adventure game. You aim to improve workflows, embrace constructive feedback, thrive in a highly collaborative environment, and will proactively seek opportunities to elevate the game.
Ultimately, the ideal candidate has a strong sense of how lighting contributes to tell a deeply compelling story and possesses broad technical skills that compliment an artistic eye.
Responsibilities

• Responsible for lighting game environments in AAA titles with the highest level of quality.
• Contributing to the development and placing of visual effects related to lighting and atmosphere.
• Work closely with Art Director and team leads to help define and execute the lighting direction for the project.
• Assist graphics engineers in designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining lighting pipelines.
• Help to identify improvements and efficiencies within our lighting pipeline to speed production and reduce costs at run time.
• Research new lighting tools and techniques to create more efficient and visually appealing environments.
• Work with engineering to manage environment lighting to run efficiently, cleanly, and to fit into the established memory limits.
• Collaborate with Programmers, Tech Art, and other members of the team to improve our tools and pipelines.
• Create, maintain, and communicate documentation for lighting guidelines and implementation techniques.
• Work within and anticipate different production and technical constraints and understand the budgeting restrictions associated with them.
• Participate in giving & receiving critique to ensure scenes are as impactful as they can be.
• Author post processing effects such as color grading, exposure, tone mapping, bloom, etc.

Skills & Requirements

• Must submit portfolio/demo reel
• 2-3 years of experience minimum in AAA game development or credit on at least one AAA title as lighting artist.
• Understanding of game lighting fundamentals required, experience with physically-based rendering pipelines preferred.
• Experience lighting environments and characters with an understanding of gameplay implications and performance requirements.
• Knowledge of color theory and a strong sense of light and shadow.
• Understandings the use of lighting to enhance mood within a scene.
• Ability to give feedback to more junior lighting artists.
• Working knowledge of industry standard rendering concepts and post-processing effects, preferably within the Unreal Engine.
• Ability to follow concept/reference and ability to work with wide range of styles with minimal concept and direction.

Pluses

• Experience creating color key images to guide lighting.
• Passion for games and storytelling.
• Proficiency with Premiere (or Davinci Resolve), After Effects, Photoshop, UE5
• A familiarity with narrative driven adventure games (Life is Strange, Detroit: Become Human, Wolf Among Us, etc).

Benefits

• Competitive salary depending on experience
• Generous vacation time and paid parental leave
• Health insurance for you and your family at a low cost to you
• Dental and Vision insurance for you and your family at NO cost to you
• Life and Disability benefits at NO cost to you
• Optional Flexible Spending Account (including Healthcare and Limited Purpose), Dependent Care Account, and Health Savings Account available
• Optional Supplemental Health and Life Insurance
• 401(k) Plan with an Employer Match
• Growth opportunities for your career

Salary Range: DOE
About Deck Nine
Here at Deck Nine Games our passion is storytelling games. We are an independent game developer dedicated to crafting AAA interactive story games that inspire, transform, and entertain players. In 2021 we released Life is Strange True Colors, which went on to win multiple awards for storytelling and visuals, including best storytelling for 2021 and a VGA for Games for Impact. Recently we announced that we are developing a game for the hit sci-fi Amazon series, The Expanse. Our prior titles have won multiple awards, including Game of the Year and nominations for VGA and BAFTA awards. The studio is 150+ amazing people both located in our headquarters in sunny Westminster, Colorado and spread throughout the world permanently remote.
As the crafters of stories that encompass the full breadth of life's experiences, Deck Nine is committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and multicultural team in which people from all walks of life feel inspired to do their best work. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and believe deeply in the creativity and strength built from diversity of race, religion, disability, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, nationality, and the many other qualities that make us different.
If this sounds appealing to you, please apply now!