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Technical Artist II

Technical Artist II

Location: Hyderabad, Telangana, India

EA SPORTS is one of the most iconic brands in entertainment with over 25 years of innovation, passion, and connecting millions of players across the globe to their favorite sports, teams, and players. EA FUEL is a division of EA SPORTS dedicated to creating high-quality mobile sports games connected to some of the world's biggest gaming franchises, including EA SPORTS FIFA and EA SPORTS MADDEN NFL .

Industrial Toys is a AAA mobile developer founded by Halo veteran Alex Seropian. Our mission is to make games that are Mobile To The Core! We are currently working to bring cutting edge FPS gaming to your phone. If you’re interested in working with veteran mobile, console, and PC developers in creating new AAA experiences to reach billions of mobile players around the world we would like to hear from you!

Role Overview

The Technical Artist (TA) acts as a bridge between the artists and programmers working on a game. They ensure art assets can be easily integrated into a game without sacrificing the overall artistic vision or exceeding the technical limits of the chosen platform. The Technical Artist works as part of the art team and coordinates closely with the lead artists and the art director, as well as with the lead programmers.

The main areas of responsibility for Technical Artists include setting up and maintaining the art production workflow and making decisions about which art packages and tools a studio should use. Technical Artists are also charged with investigating new techniques and implementing them within the team. The job often includes an instructional element, with the Technical Artist sharing their knowledge with other artists via training and mentoring sessions.

The Technical Artist typically works one step removed from the direct creation of game art assets, setting up the systems of production as well as solving problems as they arise. It’s crucial for the Technical Artist to keep up-to-date in changes in technology, both in terms of mobile hardware, art packages, and new techniques. The Technical Artist is expected to be able to create custom tools to improve the efficiency of their team. This is usually carried out using the scripting languages included in the main modeling and animation packages.

Responsibilities:

• Report to the Incubation Lead
• Prepare assets for export from Maya and import into UE4, ensuring they work within technical constraints
• Collaborate with engineering to implement technical art features
• Identify and implement art pipeline optimizations
• Implement technical benchmarks for various art features (mesh rendering, vfx, LODs)
• Generalist approach to work on various art related work like vfx, animations, materials, optimizations

What skills does EA look for?

Technical Artists for EA will have experience involving both art and programming. A Technical Artist can come from either background, though most tend to have been artists who have specialized in a particular area of art production.
They should have a detailed knowledge of at least one industry-standard art package. The use of scripting languages is required, as is an understanding of the limitations of mobile hardware. Some Technical Artists come to games after holding a similar position in the film or special effects industries, where the experience of high-end rendering techniques or complex animation are useful skills.

The role of Technical Artist is a specialized one. Candidates must be able to show technical proficiency in areas such as lighting and rendering, texturing, and graphics related programming languages such as shaders. They should also have extensive knowledge of art packages ranging from modeling to texturing and special effects and be able to customize them to be as streamlined as possible for specific projects.

Most Technical Artists will have a degree in a relevant visual art or technical subject; however, the most important prerequisite for the role is experience working with art tools and game hardware on a wide range of projects.

Skills and Experience:

• 3+ years of professional experience in games production on at least one shipped game title, preferably a shooter
• Advanced knowledge of Maya and familiarity with modeling and texturing
• Working knowledge of UE4
• Proficient in Python and C++
• Advanced knowledge of blendspaces, state machines, skeletal mesh setup
• Ability to communicate with different disciplines (artists, engineers, designers)
• Mobile or console game development experience
• Understand asset optimization challenges and techniques especially on mobile (preferred)
• Solid understanding of unique constraints on mobile platforms (iOS and Android) (preferred)
• Familiarity with animation and rigging (bonus)
• FPS experience (bonus)