Game Art & AI Pipeline Intern

Role Overview

We are looking for a Game Art & AI Pipeline Intern to help create game artwork, animate assets, and support the end-to-end development pipeline that turns ideas into playable game content. This is a hands-on role for someone who wants to grow across art production, game development workflows, AI-assisted creation, and the practical work that comes with building a studio from the ground up.

You will work closely with the founding team on visual assets, animation, content workflows, and production systems. The role is intentionally broad: one week may involve concept exploration and character or environment assets; another may involve preparing sprites, animation states, asset exports, documentation, testing, or improving how art moves through the game pipeline.

What You Will Do

• Create and refine game artwork, including characters, props, environments, UI elements, icons, and promotional visuals.
• Animate game art for gameplay use, including sprite states, loops, transitions, effects, and export-ready assets.
• Help build and maintain the end-to-end game development pipeline, from idea and concept art through asset production, implementation, QA, and iteration.
• Use AI generation platforms (like Ludo, Meshy, and others) to rapidly create 2D/3D art assets, textures, and 3D animations, accelerating the production pipeline while maintaining quality and originality.
• Learn new AI-assisted art, animation, and production tools over time and help the team decide where they fit into the workflow.
• Prepare assets for game engines and engineering handoff, including naming, file organization, export formats, size constraints, and versioning.
• Collaborate with designers and engineers to make sure artwork works in gameplay, not just as standalone visuals.
• Support practical production work that comes with early-stage game development, including research, playtesting, documentation, content cleanup, and pipeline experiments.

What We Are Looking For

• A portfolio, class project, mod, game jam project, animation reel, or other work that shows visual craft and follow-through.
• Interest in games, interactive worlds, visual storytelling, and production workflows.
• Basic familiarity with digital art tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, Blender, Aseprite, Figma, Krita, or similar tools.
• Interest in animation and asset preparation for real-time games.
• Curiosity about AI generation platforms (e.g., Ludo, Meshy) and a willingness to explore how they can be used to generate game-ready 3D models and animations.
• Currently in your Junior year or higher (Senior year preferred) of a related degree program.
• Comfort working in a flexible startup environment where priorities can shift and the role may expand.
• Strong communication, organization, and ability to document work clearly.

Nice To Have

• Experience with Unity, Unreal, Godot, or another game engine.
• Experience with sprite animation, 2D rigging, simple VFX, UI art, or motion design.
• Familiarity with Git, version control, asset naming conventions, or production tracking tools.
• Experience using AI 3D generation tools (like Meshy) or 2D-to-3D animation workflows for creative production.
• Interest in technical art, tool building, automation, or game pipeline design.

Benefits & Perks

• USD-Pegged Compensation: We monitor currency exchange rates and adjust compensation as needed to protect against fluctuations.
• Project Bonuses: We share our success with project-based bonuses tied to game launches and key milestones.
• Internship Certificate & Full-Time Path: Receive a formal certificate upon completion, followed by an evaluation to transition into a longer-term or full-time role based on performance.

How We Work

This role is hybrid and flexible. We care about consistent collaboration, clear communication, and visible progress more than rigid office schedules. Some work may happen remotely, and some collaboration may happen in person depending on project needs.

Growth Path

This internship is designed for someone who wants to grow into a hybrid creative production role: part game artist, part animator, part pipeline builder, and part AI-enabled production generalist. Over time, the right person can take on more ownership across art direction support, asset systems, animation workflows, and game content production.

How To Apply

Send a short note, portfolio or work samples, and any relevant game, animation, or AI-assisted creative projects to careers@squadloom.com.