Crustacean Interactive is looking for a talented Character Artist to help bring the world of Strayed VR to life. You’ll be creating customizable characters, armor, and clothing for our open-world survival game on Meta Quest.

As part of a small, passionate indie team, you’ll have a direct impact on our customization systems and overall player experience. This role requires a balance of strong artistic vision, technical efficiency, and adaptability.

This is a paid contract role, starting part-time (up to 20 hours/week) with the opportunity to transition into a full-time position (40 hours/week) after 2–3 months.

Responsibilities

• Design, model, and texture realistic characters, clothing, and armor with a focus on anatomy and believability.
• Create low-poly, deformation-friendly, and VR-optimized assets for animation and gameplay.
• Translate concept designs into production-ready assets while meeting technical requirements (poly counts, texture memory, shaders).
• Help establish best practices and documentation for the character art pipeline.
• Provide feedback and collaborate across disciplines (programmers, artists, tech artists) to solve creative and technical challenges.
• Manage tasks independently and communicate clearly in a fully remote team environment.

Requirements

• Portfolio showcasing game-ready characters, clothing, and armor, including examples of customization systems.
• Strong grasp of human anatomy, proportions, and deformation for animation.
• Experience with rigging, skin weighting, and character customization workflows.
• Proven ability to create optimized assets for real-time engines (Unity experience preferred).
• Prior shipped game title(s) or production-level character work strongly preferred.
• Proficiency with industry-standard tools:

  • Modeling/Sculpting: Blender (preferred), Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush
  • Texturing/Materials: Substance Painter (required)

• Solid understanding of PBR workflows and material setup for real-time rendering.
• Strong communication skills and comfort working in a small, remote indie team.

Bonus Skills

• Familiarity with VR performance constraints.
• Experience building modular character systems.
• Interest in VR, survival, or sandbox games.

Benefits

• Fully remote role
• Flexible hours
• Growth opportunity from part-time to full-time

How to Apply

Complete the online application along with your resume, portfolio, and a short cover letter.