Game Art Intern (2D)

Studio: Robotic Arm Software 
Project: a Lovecraftian story-driven deck-building card battler set in 1910 
Reports to: Project Lead
Type: Paid Internship — 30+ hours/week, on-site in Northbrook, IL
Duration: 4 months, with possibility to extend

About the project

We're creating a story-driven deck-builder where six playable characters each follow their own branching descent through an interlocking 1910 occult mystery. We blend cosmic horror, period-accurate research, and meaningful choice consequences into a card-combat framework. The game is in active production, targeting Early Access on Steam, with a per-character DLC model that lets us keep growing the cast post-launch.

What you'll do

You'll work directly with the project lead and contribute to three art pipelines, using AI assistance where applicable:

• UI art — icons, frames, card templates, map and menu elements, status effect glyphs, and supporting interface art that fits a moody, ink-and-parchment 1910 aesthetic.
• Character art — produce portraits, expressions, and key-art-quality character renders using a hybrid workflow: AI tools for ideation and base passes, your hand for selection, correction, paint-over, and final polish. We expect taste and judgment, not prompt-spam.
• Creature & enemy art — design and finalize the bestiary: cultists, hybrids, ritual constructs, and cosmic horrors. Same hybrid workflow as character art — AI for ideation and base passes, your hand for silhouette correction, anatomy fixes, paint-over, and final polish. You'll take rough briefs ("a 1910 dockworker whose face is wrong") and turn them into readable, on-style combat sprites that hold up next to each other in an encounter.
• Live2D animation — rig and animate character portraits (and select creatures) for in-game dialogue and reactive moments: idle breathing, emotional state transitions, sanity slips, attack tells, and death reactions.

Day-to-day, expect a mix of: producing finished assets to a brief, iterating on feedback, sitting in on short design syncs, and helping us tighten the visual identity of the game.

Must Have

• Strong 2D fundamentals — anatomy, lighting, value structure, and composition, demonstrable in a portfolio.
• Working proficiency with Live2D Cubism — at least one rigged-and-animated character you can show, even if a personal project.
• Comfort using AI image tools as part of a pipeline (ComfyUI preferred) and the discipline to integrate, paint over, and correct their output rather than ship raw generations.
• A shipping-quality eye for UI — you can tell when an icon reads at small sizes and when it doesn't.
• Self-direction on remote tasks — you can take a written brief, ask the right clarifying questions up front, and deliver without daily hand-holding.
• Reliable communication — responsive, honest about timelines, willing to flag blockers early.

Highly Desired

• Period research instinct — interest in Edwardian / late-Victorian visual culture, occult printed matter, period typography, ephemera, and ornament.
• Familiarity with the Lovecraftian / cosmic horror genre — you've read at least some of the canon and have opinions about it.
• Game-art experience — sprite sheets, card frames, UI states (hover/pressed/disabled), or atlas-friendly export workflows.
• Light Godot 4 familiarity — enough to import your own assets, set up a Live2D scene, and verify it looks right in-engine.
• Experience with deck-builders / narrative card games as a player — you understand why card readability and iconography matter.
• Vector / type-design skills for sigils, seals, document props, and headline lettering.
• Basic motion design beyond Live2D — UI transitions, particle hints, juice.

What you'll get out of it

• A real shipped credit on a Steam/mobile title.
• Direct feedback from a working developer on each piece, not bottlenecked through layers of approvers.
• Exposure to a production pipeline that mixes traditional craft with AI tooling — increasingly the shape of indie art roles in 2026.
• A finished portfolio block: rigged character, UI suite, and key art, all in a coherent shipped style.