Senior Lighting Artist – Photoreal VFX Film

Job Position(s): Senior Lighting Artist – Photoreal VFX Film

Crafty Apes LLC is hiring a Senior Lighting Artist for its VFX team based in London, England. This role sits within the CG department and focuses on building photoreal lighting setups that bridge computer-generated elements with live-action plates across feature film production. It is the right fit for an experienced lighter who understands how light behaves in the real world and how to replicate that within a VFX pipeline.

About the Role

The Senior Lighting Artist works within a post-production workflow that spans both film and episodic television projects, contributing to shots from initial look development through to final composite handoff. Day to day, you are building and refining lighting rigs, working closely with compositing to ensure CG integrates cleanly with on-set photography, and helping define the mood and tone of sequences in line with the director’s vision. Crafty Apes operates across a varied production slate, so the range of work is broad and the technical demands are real.

Key Responsibilities

• Create photoreal lighting setups in Maya and Houdini that match the look and exposure of live-action plates.
• Develop look and mood for CG sequences in collaboration with the VFX supervisor and DOP references.
• Deliver lighting passes to compositing with clean, well-organized render layers that support efficient post-production workflow.
• Assess on-set reference, HDR captures, and lighting data to ground CG elements in the physical conditions of each shoot.
• Identify and troubleshoot lighting and shading issues across shots, maintaining consistency across a sequence or full episode.
• Contribute to pipeline decisions around lighting tools, render settings, and look development processes within the VFX pipeline.

What You Bring

• Five or more years of lighting experience in film or episodic television production at a VFX studio.
• Strong working knowledge of Maya and Houdini within a photoreal CG pipeline.
• A demonstrable eye for color, shadow, and composition supported by credited work on released projects.
• Experience with physically based rendering and a solid understanding of light behavior in real-world environments.
• A reel that shows photoreal character or environment lighting across feature film or high-end television credits.

Why This Role

Crafty Apes LLC has built a solid reputation across feature film and television VFX, with credits that reflect genuine breadth in both scale and genre. The London studio works on productions that require high-end photoreal output, which means the Senior Lighting Artist here is solving real problems on real shots rather than padding a reel. For a lighter at this career stage, that consistent volume of production work is hard to find in one place.

Apply now for the Senior Lighting Artist position at Crafty Apes LLC and bring your photoreal lighting experience to a team doing serious work in London.