Lighting Artist

Experience level: mid senior level.

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.

Employment Type:  1-Year Contract

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Keywords is committed to creating a diverse,  inclusive and supportive working environment.

Role Information: EN

Studio: Keywords Studios

Location: Asia Pacific, Japan, Tokyo

Area of Work: Art Services

Service: Create

Employment Type: Full Time, Contract

Working Pattern: Remote

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Keywords Studios is a global provider of creative and technical services to the video games industry, with over 13,000 professionals across 70+ studios in 25+ countries. We support clients across the entire game lifecycle through four core Service Lines:

• Create — Game development, art production, and audio

• Globalize — Localization, localization QA, functional testing

• Engage — Marketing, LiveOps, community, and player support

• Media & Entertainment

In Japan, Keywords Studios delivers its full range of services across Create, Globalize, and Engage, supporting leading publishers, developers, agencies, and IP owners through both local and global teams.