Lighting Artist

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

If you'd like to know more about Keywords Studios we recommend visiting our corporate site HERE

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.

Originally posted on Himalayas