Become a Matte Painter.

Design how digital products work — not just how they look. UX Designers conduct user research, build information architecture, sketch user flows, prototype interactions, and run usability tests to turn messy human problems into intuitive, evidence-backed product experiences. They sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and research, owning the journey from first user interview to final dev handoff. Distinct from UI designers (visual surface), product designers (broader strategic remit), and graphic designers (brand and marketing assets).

UX Writers own the words inside software products — button labels, error messages, empty states, onboarding flows, tooltips, confirmation dialogs, and loading states. Unlike content writers who produce blog posts or marketing copy, UX writers work inside Figma files alongside designers and PMs, writing copy that is functional and must work at 2–10 word constraints. In India the role has moved from a rarity to a listed job at Razorpay, CRED, Swiggy, Zomato, PhonePe, Meesho, GoodGlamm, and the FAANG India offices — companies that discovered that poorly-worded error states double support ticket volume and that a single word change on a payment CTA can shift conversion by 8–15%. The discipline sits at the intersection of linguistics, cognitive psychology, and product design, and is increasingly called 'content design' at more mature orgs to signal the strategic, system-thinking scope of the work.

Storyboard artists translate written scripts into sequential visual shot plans — panel-by-panel drawings that specify camera angle, framing, character blocking, screen direction, and cut timing before a single frame of animation or live footage is captured. In India, the role sits at the intersection of India's large animation outsourcing industry (Toonz Animation Thiruvananthapuram, Reliance Animation Mumbai, Green Gold Animation Hyderabad, Cosmos-Maya Mumbai, DQ Entertainment Hyderabad) and a fast-growing demand from OTT original productions (Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix India, Amazon Prime Video India specials), advertising production houses, and independent ad-film directors in Mumbai and Bengaluru. A storyboard artist must speak both languages fluently — the director's cinematic intent and the animator's or DoP's production constraints — making this one of the most technically rigorous visual development roles in Indian media.

Writers in India work across an unusually wide span — journalism at legacy outlets (The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Print, Mint, Business Standard, Economic Times, Caravan, Outlook, India Today) and digital-native publishers (Newslaundry, Scroll, The Wire, Quint, Moneycontrol, ThePrint Strategic Affairs); novel and non-fiction publishing at HarperCollins India, Penguin Random House India, Westland (Amazon-owned), Juggernaut, Bloomsbury India, Aleph, Pan Macmillan India; scriptwriting for Bollywood (₹5L-2Cr per major script) and OTT (Netflix India, Amazon Prime Video India, Disney+ Hotstar — paying ₹3-30L per episode of premium streaming series); content writing for marketing teams (corporate brand voice, B2B SaaS content, EdTech curriculum, fintech narratives); copywriting at ad agencies (Wieden+Kennedy India, Ogilvy India, Lowe Lintas, BBDO, Leo Burnett); ghostwriting for celebrity / business / political memoirs; and increasingly Substack / Medium / personal-brand newsletter writing (Aakar Patel, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Andy Mukherjee, Madhavankutty Pillai have built independent media). The Indian path requires no specific degree — journalism programs at Asian College of Journalism Chennai, Indian Institute of Mass Communication Delhi, Symbiosis Institute of Media Pune, Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media Bangalore, Xavier Institute of Communications Mumbai are the formal training tracks, but most successful Indian writers built careers through self-taught practice and persistent publication. Pay varies wildly: journalism ₹4-15L mid-career; published novel advance ₹2-30L (Penguin / HarperCollins / Westland — rare ₹50L+ exceptions for established authors); Bollywood / OTT scriptwriter ₹5L-2Cr per script; content writing ₹3-15L corporate; copywriting ad-agency ₹4-25L; freelance content writers ₹40k-3L per month variable; top Substack writers / newsletter founders ₹30L-2Cr annually.

Graphic Designers shape how a brand looks, feels and communicates across every visual surface — packaging on a Reliance Smart shelf, an Instagram reel for a D2C launch, a billboard at the Mumbai airport, the title card of a Netflix India show, the typography on an Amul ad, or the icon set inside a Razorpay onboarding flow. They translate brand strategy and marketing briefs into visual systems: logos, color palettes, type pairings, illustration, layout, motion, and packaging. In India, graphic design careers split into three contexts. (1) Agencies — Wieden+Kennedy, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Lowe Lintas, Dentsu Webchutney, FCB, BBH; lower starting pay, broader portfolio, fast-paced, account-driven. (2) In-house at consumer brands — Nykaa, Mamaearth, Sugar, boAt, Lenskart, Asian Paints, ITC, HUL; deeper brand-system work, more stable schedule, higher pay at senior levels. (3) Freelance / studio — independent operators serving multiple D2C and startup clients. Distinct from UX/UI Designers (digital product flows), Industrial Designers (3D physical product), and Illustrators (one specific craft within graphic design).

Illustrators make pictures with intent — editorial spot illustrations for The Caravan or Mint, brand mascots and visual systems for D2C startups, children's book art, app onboarding illustrations, packaging, posters, fashion prints, and social-media motion-friendly art. Distinct from graphic designers (who arrange type and image inside a system) and from animators (who add the time dimension), illustrators own the still image — concept, drawing, colour, mood, and personality — usually in Procreate, Photoshop, or Adobe Illustrator on an iPad or Wacom tablet. India's illustrator economy is split across editorial (publications, op-eds, magazine spreads), publishing (Tara Books, Pratham, Tulika, Karadi Tales for children's books — Penguin India and HarperCollins India for adult fiction), brand work (D2C startups, ed-tech, fintech), and a fast-growing in-house illustration team trend at companies like Headspace-style apps, Zomato, Swiggy, and Cred. Most working illustrators in India are freelance, with 1-3 anchor retainer clients balancing per-project work.

3D Game Artists build the characters, environments, props, and hard-surface assets that players see inside shipped titles — from indie mobile games to AAA console releases. In India, the role clusters at Lakshya Digital (Pune + Gurgaon), Ubisoft Pune, Rockstar India (Bengaluru), Sumo Group India, EA Hyderabad, dneg, and a thick layer of AAA-outsource vendors servicing EA, Activision, 2K, and Warner Bros. pipelines. The day-to-day covers Maya/Blender/3ds Max polygon modeling, ZBrush high-poly sculpting, Substance Painter PBR texturing, normal/AO/curvature bake-downs, retopology for real-time poly budgets, UV layout, LOD generation, and asset integration into Unreal Engine 5 or Unity. Game art diverges from film VFX on a hard axis: every asset must hit frame-rate budgets — draw calls, texture memory, poly counts, and Nanite thresholds are first-class craft constraints, not afterthoughts.

Senior: N/A

Character designers are the visual architects of personalities — they translate a director's or writer's character brief into a complete visual identity that works at every scale, from a 32px game icon to a 4K animatable asset. In India, the role sits across Toonz Animation (Thiruvananthapuram), Green Gold Animation (Hyderabad, home of Chhota Bheem), Reliance Animation, DQ Entertainment, and an accelerating freelance economy for global animation and game projects via ArtStation and LinkedIn. The craft demands simultaneous fluency in storytelling (can the personality read in 5 seconds?), technical constraint (does the design rig cleanly? does the silhouette read at 16:9 and 1:1?), and IP discipline (does every character look like it lives in the same world?). Unlike concept artists who range across environments and props, character designers go deep on the human or creature form — anatomy, costume language, facial expression architecture, and the iterative turnaround pipeline that bridges 2D design to 3D model or rigged animation.

Senior: N/A

2D Game Artists produce every visual asset players see in a mobile or casual game — character sprites, environment tiles, UI chrome, HUD elements, and the animation frames that bring them to life. In India, the role sits at the intersection of the mobile-casual explosion (Moonfrog Labs, Junglee Games, Octro, Nazara Technologies, Mech Mocha) and a growing indie freelance economy on ArtStation. Day-to-day work oscillates between high-craft concept art that defines a game's visual language and production-line sprite-sheet assembly that must hit precise performance budgets — texture atlases packed under 2048×2048, mipmaps verified, PVRTC/ASTC compression tested on actual Android devices. The path in is almost entirely portfolio-driven: a tight ArtStation book of game-ready character sprites, one Spine 2D rigged character, and a packaged UI kit outweighs any formal degree in most Indian studio hiring rounds.

Senior: ₹35.0L

Film Editors are the invisible architects of a film's rhythm, structure, and emotional impact — assembling raw footage from dailies into assembly cuts, refining through rough and fine cuts, shaping the director's cut, and delivering the locked conform to the DI suite. In India the role spans Bollywood features at Yash Raj Films, Dharma Productions, and T-Series, through Netflix/Prime/Hotstar OTT originals, Tollywood prestige productions, and regional language cinema. The field is dominated by careers like Sreekar Prasad (multi-language master: Taare Zameen Par, Dangal, Baahubali, RRR), Namrata Rao (Queen, Super Deluxe), Apurva Asrani (Aligarh, Haasil), and Hemanti Sarkar (Vidya Balan-era Bollywood). Entry is exclusively through FTII Pune's editing department, SRFTI Kolkata, or unpaid assistant-editor apprenticeships on productions — portfolios of short films and IMDb credits open the next door. The NLE of choice across Indian post-production is Avid Media Composer for features and Adobe Premiere Pro for OTT; DaVinci Resolve is increasingly used through the offline-to-online pipeline.

Senior: N/A

CGI Lighting Artists illuminate 3D scenes so they render as photo-real or stylized images in feature films, episodic VFX, animated features, and AAA games. The work is technically demanding: setting up area lights, HDRI sky rigs, and practical emitters in Katana or Maya; assigning and balancing physically-based shaders in Arnold, Karma (Houdini), or RenderMan; tuning sample counts, ray-depth limits, and denoising passes to hit quality targets within render-farm budgets. Indian studios driving this market include DNEG India (Mumbai, Hyderabad), MPC (Bengaluru), Lakshya Digital (Gurugram), Tata Elxsi (Bengaluru, Chennai), Trace VFX (Mumbai), and Prime Focus World — all feeding Hollywood and global OTT pipelines. A lighting artist's output goes directly to compositors via multi-pass AOV renders (beauty, diffuse, specular, shadow, emission, depth, motion-vector), so understanding ACES color management, LUT pipelines, and what comp artists need from each pass is as important as making a scene look good in isolation.

Senior: N/A