About me
I'm a technical artist with over 20 years industry experience in games and film. Some of my skills include Tools, Shaders, VFX, Rigging, and Animation.
My Unity tools Fluid FX Factory, Puppet Face, Puppet3D, Puppet2D are popular on the Unity Asset Store,
I began my career as a character animator in film, later getting a general artist animator role in games. I quickly found my self writing tools to solve any limitations we were having and discovered a passion for technical art. Character animation continues to be infused in much of what I do as a Tech Artist, whether its with making dynamic shaders, animator friendly rigs, cloth simulation on films like Pirates of The Caribbean, or with the motion and timing of my VFX.
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The Technical Artist in a Post-AI World
For years, technical artists occupied a valuable middle ground between art and technology. They built tools, automated workflows, and translated technical complexity into something artists could use. But AI is changing that equation.
If every artist can now create their own tools simply by describing what they need, what happens to the technical artist?
At first glance, AI appears to level the playing field. Much of the knowledge that traditionally gave technical artists an advantage—programming, shader development, scripting, and understanding systems—can increasingly be generated on demand. An artist no longer needs to spend months learning a language or a pipeline; they can ask an AI to help them build it.
But that doesn't necessarily mean the role disappears. It may simply move up a level.
Rather than building small, task-specific tools, technical artists may become the people who build larger systems—tools that are too complex, interconnected, or strategically important for individual artists to create and maintain themselves. Their value may shift from implementation to architecture.
The strongest argument for the future technical artist is not technical knowledge but problem-solving. As AI automates more execution, the hardest problems become less about writing code and more about deciding what should be built, how systems fit together, and where opportunities exist that others haven't noticed. Technical artists have traditionally been explorers, and that instinct may become even more valuable in an AI-driven world.
There is another possibility, however. The most valuable skill in the future may not be programming at all. It may be directing and managing. As AI agents become capable of handling increasing amounts of work, success could depend on how effectively someone coordinates multiple agents, evaluates their output, and guides them toward a goal. In that world, everyone becomes a director.
This raises an uncomfortable question: are the skills that made someone a great technical artist the same skills required to be a great director of AI? Not necessarily.
Yet technical artists may have an advantage. They are often the first people to experiment with new technologies and workflows. Many of today's technical artists are already building AI-powered prototypes, tools, and even entire games. Their willingness to operate at the frontier may allow them to develop the next generation of skills before others do.
Interestingly, AI may also reward collaboration in unexpected ways. Artists who have historically been strong collaborators are often already skilled at communicating intent, giving feedback, and refining outcomes—exactly the skills required to work effectively with AI. In some cases, these artists may become less dependent on technical artists than ever before. Ironically, it may be the people who struggle to collaborate who need the most support from tooling and automation.
Perhaps the biggest shift is that AI dramatically expands what is possible. When execution becomes cheap, ideas become expensive. The question is no longer "Can we build this?" but "Why should we build this instead of something else?"
This suggests a future where the most valuable skills are:
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Great ideas — choosing the right problems and opportunities.
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Management and coordination — directing teams of AI agents efficiently.
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AI fluency — understanding how to achieve a specific outcome through the most effective use of AI.
Tool development itself may change too. If artists can create bespoke solutions for themselves, centralized tools become less important. The opportunity may lie in building platforms that embrace customization rather than fight it—systems designed to generate bespoke workflows instead of enforcing a single workflow.
Ultimately, AI may not reduce the need for technical artists. It may redefine them. The future technical artist may be less programmer, less tool builder, and more architect, explorer, strategist, and director.
In a world where everyone can make almost anything, the people who thrive will be the ones who know what is worth making in the first place.