Shaiyan Azim

Award-winning Character Artist and 2D Concept Artist with over 8 years of experience creating original character designs, visual development assets, and game-ready artwork for commercial, academic, and independent game projects. Skilled in translating creative briefs into production-ready character concepts, maintaining artistic consistency, and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams throughout the game development pipeline. Proficient in Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Unreal Engine, and visual storytelling.

Known for creative problem-solving, strong communication, and consistently delivering high-quality work within deadline-driven environments.

Character Artist - Jimbainini Lab Games

(2025-06)

• Translate written creative briefs into comprehensive front-and-back orthographic turnaround concept sheets for pre-production game titles, including the RPG project "Paladyne Light World."
• Conceptualize and design distinctive armor character classes (Eclipsed Phantom, Street Guard, Faithstepper, Stormsurge) from text-only documentation to establish visual asset identity.
• Produce 5 to 10 style-consistent character concept sheets per project, ensuring silhouette clarity, anatomical proportions, and strict style cohesion across diverse class archetypes.
• Manage the end-to-end design pipeline autonomously from initial ideation sketches to finalized production assets.

NPC Designer (Cutscenes) - Flying Onigiri

(2022-09 - 2023-06)

• Designed and illustrated 9 unique NPCs across 3 historical musical eras, delivering culturally accurate character sheets and cinematic cutscene assets for a shipped rhythm game ("Trend Hoppers!").
• Secured 3rd Place at the Level Up Showcase 2023 Player's Choice Award through successful asset execution and cross-team collaboration.
• Created stylized anime visual assets for visual novel cutscene layouts using Clip Studio Paint, achieving flawless style integration.
• Conducted independent cultural and historical research to ground character wardrobes in authentic musical eras, maximizing narrative depth.

Character and Asset Designer - York University Game Design Class

(2022-09 - 2023-06)

• Acted as the sole character designer for the protagonist of "Semester’s Long Road," steering the visual identity from preliminary concepts to the final production-ready sprite sheet.
• Illustrated sequential, comic-style storyboards and cutscene panels to map key narrative beats dynamically.
• Designed a vast majority of the game’s structural assets, including environments, interactable props, and user interface (UI) components, using Adobe Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint.
• Partnered closely with a 4-person development team to align visual deliverables with strict academic milestone deadlines.

Independent Game Developer - Self-Employed

(2020-12 - 2021-06)

• Solo-developed a 3D action-adventure prototype ("Cities and Names 4: Clarice's Plague") within Unreal Engine 4, managing level design, character rigging integration, combat scripting, and level triggers.
• Selected, customized, and integrated stock 3D assets to establish a cohesive aesthetic layout, successfully reducing total asset creation time by 40%.
• Authored and scripted branched interactive narrative sequences utilizing text-to-speech (TTS) audio frameworks.

Game Design Bootcamp - Circuit Stream (2026-02 - 2026-10)

Bachelor’s Degree - Digital Media Game Arts - York University (2018-09 - 2025-06)