3D Character Artist in Unreal

About Us
Hidden Acorn is a new game studio based in the San Francisco Bay Area building our first title: a competitive, PvP real-time strategy game launching across all major platforms. We're a small, ambitious team and we are looking for talented, passionate people who'll build it with us from the ground up.
About the Role
Hidden Acorn is looking for a talented Character Artist to help us build the roster at the heart of our RTS. Characters are the soul of this genre — players pick their favorites, study their animations, argue about their designs — and we want to make units worth that kind of attention. You'll be working closely with our Creative Director to bring heroes, units, and creatures from concept to game-ready asset in Unreal Engine 5, helping us build a visual language that's consistent, readable, and genuinely exciting to look at.
What You'll Do
Work with the Creative Director to create concept art and sculpt highly detailed heroes, units, and creatures that form the visual backbone of our roster
Sculpt high-poly characters in ZBrush: heroes, units, and creatures
Retopologize to clean game-res meshes with sensible polycount and edge flow for deformation
Texture in a PBR workflow: albedo, roughness/metallic, normals, channel-packed masks
Set up and maintain assets in Unreal Engine 5, including imports, LODs, and material instances, so characters are ready to drop into the game
Collaborate with the Creative Director on faction design, costume language, and visual hierarchy
Maintain consistency across a growing roster so the game's art feels cohesive as the character library expands
Help document new and existing asset pipeline conventions to streamline processes for artists across the team
What We're Looking For
3–5 years of character art experience with at least one shipped or near-shipped project
Highly skilled at sculpting, retopology, UV layout, and PBR texturing for real-time characters
Ability to execute a visual style consistently across a roster — hand-painted, photorealistic, or stylized
Working knowledge of Unreal Engine 5 at a pipeline level: importing, material setup, LOD configuration
Strong portfolio showing characters that read clearly at a distance; Examples in RTS, MOBA, or strategy game work are preferred
Nice to Have
Rigging and/or animation experience
Experience designing within a faction or faction system (distinct visual languages per team/race/side)
Concept art skills at a thumbnail/ideation level
Familiarity with VAT or ISM workflows for crowd rendering
What We Offer
Your work will be among the most visible things in the game. Players will spend more time looking at your characters than almost anything else
Small, passionate team with a culture of adding new ideas. Your voice matters regardless of what role you're in
Remote-friendly
Competitive compensation based on experience
Please email your resume and portfolio to steven@hidden-acorn.com