Character Artist - Hair Specialist - Lakshya Digital
Not disclosed
Salary
Not disclosed by employer
£33,400
Going rate
Skilled Worker going rate
This role likely qualifies for a Skilled Worker visa
SOC 2142 (85% match) is an eligible occupation, with a going rate of £33,400, and Keywords Studios is a licensed sponsor. That is our reading of the rules. Whether they issue a Certificate of Sponsorship is still their call.
This could also be SOC 3411 (Artists, Role titled Character Artist creating artistic hair assets). We read the code off the advert, so it is our best guess, not the employer's.
About the role
We're looking for a talented mid-to-senior Character Artist to join our team and contribute to the creation of high-quality digital hair assets for an exciting AAA title.
Working closely with the client's character art team, you'll be responsible for creating realistic, performant, and visually compelling hair and fur assets that meet the project's artistic vision and technical requirements. You'll collaborate with Character Artists, Technical Artists, Art Directors, and production teams to ensure models are delivered to the highest quality while integrating seamlessly into the game's pipeline.
This role is ideal for someone with a strong artistic eye, deep technical knowledge of real-time hair workflows, and a passion for creating believable digital characters.
Job Overview:
What You'll Do
- Create high-quality real-time hair, fur, eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair, predominantly using hair cards, for hero and supporting characters
- Develop hairstyles that faithfully capture the intended style, silhouette, and personality of each character
- Collaborate closely with Character Artists and Art Directors to achieve the desired visual quality and artistic direction
- Optimise hair assets to meet performance, memory, and platform requirements without compromising visual fidelity
- Integrate and refine hair assets within the game engine, ensuring they function correctly with shading, simulation, and animation systems
- Work alongside Technical Artists to resolve technical challenges relating to grooming workflows, shaders, simulation, and rendering
- Maintain consistency across multiple characters while adapting to a variety of hairstyles and art styles
What We're Looking For
- Significant professional experience as a Hair Artist or Character Artist specialising in hair for AAA console or PC titles
- Strong portfolio demonstrating realistic or highly stylised real-time hair creation across a range of characters
- Excellent understanding of hair grooming principles, shape, flow, layering, and silhouette
- Experience authoring real-time hair cards and/or strand-based hair depending on project requirements
- Strong understanding of hair textures, shaders, materials, transparency, and rendering techniques
- Experience implementing hair assets within modern game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity
- Good understanding of optimisation techniques for real-time character rendering
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively within multidisciplinary and distributed teams
- Self-motivated, organised, and capable of managing work independently
- Experience shipping one or more AAA titles featuring high-quality digital characters
- Knowledge of hair simulation, cloth simulation, and character rigging workflows
- Experience creating fur or creature hair
- Familiarity with scan-based character pipelines and physically based rendering workflows
- Experience mentoring artists or contributing to standards and best practices
Location: Canada, US, UK
Area of Work: Art Services
Service: Create
Employment Type: Contract
Working Pattern: Full Time, Remote
This description is the source posting as it read when we added it. We are not affiliated with Keywords Studios, so check their own site for the current details.
Where this offer sits in the market
SOC 2142 · UK · ONS ASHE 2025 · ~44k in sampleSimilar sponsored roles
See all UK visa jobsNo close matches live right now.
Browse more sponsored jobs at Keywords StudiosAbout sponsorship for this role
Does this job guarantee visa sponsorship?
Not necessarily. Keywords Studios holds a sponsor licence, but sponsorship for a specific hire is always the employer's decision. Be upfront in your application that you'll require it.
What salary is needed for this role to be eligible?
The offer must clear both the general threshold and the SOC 2142 going rate of £33,400. New-entrant and shortage discounts can lower it.