[Hiring] Lighting Artist @Keywords Studios

Role Description

Applicants must be currently residing in Japan and possess valid authorization to work in Japan.

• Lighting Creation:
  • Create high-quality, visually compelling lighting for environments and cinematics.
  • Produce lighting that aligns with the project’s artistic direction and storytelling, through mood, tone, and atmosphere.
  • Develop lighting optimized for real-time game engines.
• Collaboration & Production:
  • Work closely with the Art Director to maintain the overall art direction.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams throughout the production pipeline to ensure artistic consistency and quality.
  • Participate in reviews, feedback sessions, and iterative development processes.
• Technical Art & Optimisation:
  • Ensure lighting meets performance, memory, and platform-specific requirements across a variety of platforms.
  • Collaborate closely with environment, VFX, and technical art teams to integrate lighting with assets and pipelines.
  • Apply strong understanding of lighting for real-time performance.
  • Maintain consistency in quality while adhering to technical constraints and engine limitations.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve creative and technical lighting challenges.
• Innovation & Continuous Improvement:
  • Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, tools, and workflows.
  • Contribute ideas and improvements to pipelines and production processes.
  • Continuously push the visual quality and innovation of game art production.

Qualifications

• Required Skills and Experience:
  • Extensive experience as a Lighting Artist within the video game industry, with a strong portfolio showcasing high-quality real-time game assets.
  • Strong understanding of lighting, composition, colour theory, and visual storytelling.
  • Experience creating optimized assets for modern real-time game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity.
  • Strong understanding of lighting tools (Lumen, light baking and post‑processing), performance optimization, and technical limitations across multiple gaming platforms.
  • Ability to work collaboratively within multidisciplinary teams, communicate ideas effectively, and incorporate feedback throughout production.
  • Knowledge of game development pipelines and the ability to adapt artistic styles to suit various game genres and target platforms.
• Desirable Skills and Experience:
  • Passion for gaming and a strong understanding of market trends, player expectations, and gaming cultures across PC, Console, and Nintendo platforms.
  • Experience successfully guiding and communicating with other art teams to ensure artistic vision and asset quality are maintained from concept through to final in-game implementation.

Requirements

• Employment Type: 1-Year Contract
• Location: Asia Pacific, Japan, Tokyo
• Area of Work: Art Services
• Service: Create
• Employment Type: Full Time, Contract
• Working Pattern: Remote

Benefits

• Keywords Studios is strongly committed to protecting your personal information.
• By sending your CV/Resume, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and consent to your data being managed and retained in accordance with our data privacy and retention policy.