Senior VFX or VFX Artist

My client is an award-winning developer of beautiful and engaging games of chance. With content studios in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tel Aviv, and Hong Kong, we craft and care for our collection of top-ranked apps. We are growing quickly and partnering with some of the world’s largest entertainment companies. Our next product release will be a joint effort with King - the makers of Candy Crush, Bubble Witch, and Farm Heroes. As we expand our portfolio of free-to-play apps, we’re looking for an experienced and ambitious VFX ARTIST to create captivating real-time effects that delight our players, and reward their deeper engagement, while clearly communicating in-game information.

In collaboration with the Creative Team, you will design effects for our casual games, social casino games, meta-game promotions, and live operations features, with opportunities to design effects schema for entire new apps. As a self-starting professional, you will take pride in delivering highly performant solutions and enjoy pushing your technical skills to new limits, with the support of your Technical Art and Engineering colleagues.

You’ll have a passion for play, a healthy respect for our players, and you won’t take no for an answer when it comes to making our games better. Needless to say, you will have experience working with 3D packages and in-game FX systems to create a wide range of VFX, as well as a general understanding of good game play communication. A solid grasp of the principles of motion, anticipation, dynamics, follow-through, lighting, and other facets of animation is essential, as well as skill in creating the textures and geometry needed for stylized VFX.

Responsibilities

• Design and create captivating and highly performant visual effects for both Facebook and Mobile games using Photoshop, Maya, and in-game FX systems including Flash, Unity, Timeline Effects and other tools

• Execute concept and production designs, working side-by-side with the rest of the Technical and Creative team

• Work closely with Producers and Product Owners to ensure that projects meet our standards of excellence, satisfy marketing goals, and meet publishing schedules

• Collaborate and communicate with the Senior VFX Artist, Chief Creative Officer and Producer(s) for the creation of concepts, presentation materials, project style-guides, and final refinements of projects through the production cycle

• Create and format Unity or Flash files for hand off to developers

• Design and maintain clear naming conventions and organization for files, folder systems and other hand-off vehicles, and archiving assets and source files • Predict and manage asset file size and performance issues, and optimizing assets for file size and performance considerations

• Mentor junior VFX Artists; this includes being a source of knowledge, and the ability to convey that knowledge to your fellow VFX artists in a way that can be easily understood

• Contribute to and drive R&D with Engineers, Technical Artists and CG colleagues to maximize our technology potential, including exploring, testing and making recommendations for new production tools, pipelines and best-practices

Required • 2+ years of experience creating visual effects for both Facebook and Mobile games using Adobe Creative Suite, Maya, 3DS Max, After-Effects, and in-game FX systems including Flash, Unity, Timeline Effects and other tools and in-game FX systems

• A solid grasp of the principles of motion, anticipation, dynamics, follow-through, lighting, and other facets of animation, and previous work with real time 3d particle system (Unity preferred), physics, ribbons, shaders, solid knowledge of rendering engines

• Skill in creating from scratch the textures and geometry needed for stylized VFX

• Solid game design awareness and an exceptional game design collaborator

• Enjoy communicating and presenting your work, taking direction and feedback from stakeholders, staying organized, and managing your time effectively in a fast-paced environment

• You will have a well-organized portfolio that shows a compelling visual style, polished technical implementation and an understanding of the casual game space and narrow bandwidth environments

• A self-starter with high level of initiative, you’re proactive in finding creative and effective solutions to day-to-day problems and resolving conflicts

• A team player and mentor, you share your expertise and delight in learning new tricks of the trade

• As a social game enthusiast, you’re passionate about visual effects and driven to apply your encyclopedic knowledge of effects and the tools that create them to draw our players into a net of rewarding and exhilarating eye-candy, and help guide them through each on-screen puzzle

Preferred

• Have shipped AAA mobile titles as a VFX artist (Unity preferred)

• Experience with Unity pipeline

• Scripting experience in C#, Python, etc

• Experience designing VFX shaders

• 2D or 3D animation experience

Benefits and Perks

• 100% Health Benefits coverage for you and your dependents!

• Open, creative office space with inviting outdoor patios

• Three fully-stocked kitchens and large communal dining areas • Catered lunches throughout the week

• Employee-driven entertainment, happy hours, and team-building events throughout the year

• Ping pong table and game room

• Commuter Benefits program

• Cell phone plan discounts

• Flexible vacation policy

• Location, location, location! Right across from CalTrain and vibrant Downtown Burlingame

• Free parking, and lots of it • The best year-end party!

• A great place to work! Come by to find out for yourself! This is an exciting opportunity to join a world-class team and bring our exciting games to even more fans worldwide