How to get a job as a technical artist

gamesindustry.biz:

Alan Wen

Wednesday 25th May 2022

If you ask multiple technical artists what they do, the chances are you'll get very different responses. Although there are generalists, it is more often an umbrella that encompasses a number of specialist disciplines such as environment, shaders, VFX, and pipeline, to name just a few, so you could be involved more with the front-end or the back-end. Naturally, this also varies hugely from studio to studio.

However, if we're to explain the essence of the role, then Jodie Azhar, technical art director at Silver Rain Games says: "Technical artists are problem solvers."

"Quite often they will be creating tools to solve these problems, for instance creating a procedural system to save time for an environment artist from doing very repetitive tasks. It also involves being the bridge between the art and programming sides of game development. "They can act like translators between artists and programmers," she adds.

"They need to understand artists' processes and how they want something to look visually, and then communicate with programmers to ensure that it's implemented in-game correctly to look the way the artists want, while also being performant and exposing any control to artists in a format that makes sense for them."

Azhar has been a technical artist in the games industry for 13 years, having also worked at Rebellion and Creative Assembly, and initially specialising in technical animation, which is considered its own discipline these days -- such is the evolving nature of the role.

We ask her and three other technical artists of varying seniority levels how to go about having a career in a role highly sought after by studios in what can be described as a skill filler.

Dickie Monday is a