Open Roles

Character Designer / Illustrator

Minatomirai, Yokohama, Japan

Salary Range:From 4,000,000 - 8,000,000 JPY (depending on experience and skill)

Responsibilities

You will work closely with the founder and other artists to design and illustrate original characters for our flagship game.

• Design original anime-style characters, including playable characters, NPCs, enemies, and supporting cast members.
• Create character concepts from written ideas, mood references, personality notes, and gameplay themes.
• Develop strong silhouettes, appealing costumes, color palettes, facial expressions, and visual motifs.
• Produce polished character illustrations for use in-game, promotional materials, and internal development.
• Prepare character art that can be handed off smoothly to Live2D, Spine, or other 2D animation workflows.
• Collaborate with animators to make sure each character's personality comes through in motion.
• Help establish and maintain the visual quality bar for the game's characters.
• Contribute ideas that make the cast more memorable, charming, expressive, and emotionally engaging.

Requirements

We are looking for an artist with strong taste, imagination, and character appeal.

• Experience designing characters for games, anime, manga, VTubers, light novels, or other character-focused media.
• A strong portfolio showing original anime-style character designs.
• The ability to create appealing characters from limited prompts, rough creative direction, and collaborative feedback.
• Strong fundamentals in anatomy, posing, costume design, color, and facial expression.
• An understanding of what makes characters attractive, memorable, and marketable in a character-collection game.
• Experience creating art for Live2D or Spine animation, or an understanding of how layered character art is prepared for animation.
• Good communication skills and the ability to collaborate with other artists and animators.

Nice to Have

• Experience working on mobile games, RPGs, visual novels, or character-collection games.
• Experience designing alternate costumes, skins, expressions, or character variants.
• Familiarity with Japanese anime and game art trends.
• Interest in worldbuilding, character lore, or storytelling through visual design.
• Ability to create both cute, appealing characters and more unusual enemies or creatures.
• Experience creating production-ready layered PSD files for animation.

Why Join Kuri Kuma Games?

Kuri Kuma Games is a new independent game studio based in Japan. Because we are still small, your work will have a direct and visible impact on the game.

• Help define the look and feel of a new original IP from the beginning.
• Create characters that are central to the game, not background assets.
• Work closely with a small team where your ideas can meaningfully shape the final product.
• Build a portfolio of highly visible character designs for a commercial mobile and PC game.
• Join early and grow with the studio as the project develops.

How to Apply

Please include:

• Your portfolio, including examples of original character designs.
• Any relevant game, anime, manga, VTuber, Live2D, Spine, or illustration work.
• Your resume or career history.
• Your availability and whether you are applying for full-time or contract work.