About Kiagu Studios
A dark fantasy IP studio building across webnovel, webtoon, games, licensing, and co-development.
To help us process your application efficiently, please start your email subject line with “[KCVFX]”.
We're building a stylized anime action ARPG set in a dark fantasy world, developed in Unreal Engine 5. Combat is fast, readable, and spectacle-driven; think the visual energy of titles like Wuthering Waves, grounded in a darker, moodier art direction.
We're building a stylized anime action ARPG set in a dark fantasy world, developed in Unreal Engine 5. Combat is fast, readable, and spectacle-driven; think the visual energy of titles like Wuthering Waves, grounded in a darker, moodier art direction.
As a Senior VFX Artist, you'll help shape the look and feel of our real-time effects across the whole project: from split-second combat abilities to atmospheric environments and high-impact cinematic moments. Working alongside our existing VFX artist, you'll help raise the quality bar, refine our VFX pipeline and style guides, and be a key creative voice shaping how the game feels to play.
This is a senior, hands-on role. You'll collaborate day to day with our other VFX artist, as well as with combat designers, gameplay programmers, animators, and art direction, to make every hit, dash, and ultimate land with weight and clarity.
Responsibilities
- Create high-quality, stylized real-time VFX for combat and gameplay — character skills, abilities, hit reactions, buffs/debuffs, and status effects — with a strong focus on readability and game feel.
- Design and polish boss and enemy VFX, including signature attacks, phase transitions, and telegraphs that stay clear even in chaotic combat.
- Craft environmental and atmospheric effects — weather, ambient particles, magic, destruction — that reinforce the dark fantasy mood across our biomes.
- Build cinematic VFX for cutscenes and key story moments, working with the animation and cinematics team.
- Help establish and maintain VFX style guides, standards, and reusable systems/libraries to keep quality consistent across the team as it scales.
- Optimize effects for performance across PC and mobile targets without sacrificing visual punch.
- Partner with gameplay and technical artists to integrate VFX cleanly with our ability system and animation pipeline.
- Mentor and give feedback to other artists, and help shape our VFX pipeline and tooling.
Requirements
- 5+ years of professional VFX experience in games, with at least one shipped or substantially developed title.
- Strong command of Unreal Engine 5 and Niagara, including emitters, modules, and data-driven effect systems.
- A portfolio demonstrating stylized / anime-style real-time VFX — not just realistic effects.
- Deep understanding of game feel and combat readability: timing, silhouette, color language, and how VFX communicates gameplay.
- Solid skills in authoring VFX assets — flipbooks, meshes, trails, and materials — including hand-authored textures and shader-driven effects.
- Comfortable working with material editor / node-based shaders in UE5.
- Strong grasp of performance optimization and profiling for real-time effects.
- Excellent communication in English and the ability to work independently in a distributed, remote team.
Nice to have
- Prior work on mobile or cross-platform (PC + mobile) titles and their performance constraints.
- Familiarity with Unreal's Gameplay Ability System (GAS) and how VFX hooks into abilities.
- Experience with Houdini, or procedural/simulation workflows feeding into real-time.
- Comfort with HLSL / custom shader authoring beyond the node graph.
- A love for the action ARPG / character-action genre and its reference titles (Wuthering Waves, Honkai, Genshin, PGR, etc.).
- Basic scripting (Python / Blueprint) for VFX tooling and workflow automation.
How to Apply
Please send us the following:
- Your CV or résumé
- A portfolio showcasing your artistic experience
- Your availability
- Label “[KCVFX]” in your subject line
To help us process your application efficiently, please start your email subject line with “[KCVFX]”.
