Meet Qiwei Zhang

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Qiwei Zhang. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Qiwei, thank you so much for agreeing to open up about a sensitive and personal topic like being fired or laid-off. Unfortunately, there has been a rise in layoffs recently and so your insight and experience with overcoming being let go is relevant to so many in the community.

The Blizzard layoffs were challenging, but they reinforced my commitment to the games industry. Rather than seeing it as an endpoint, I treated it as a catalyst to refine my skills, expand my network, and diversify my creative perspective’s immediately focused on three actions:
Upskilling Strategically: I deepened my expertise in real-time VFX tools like Unity
VFX Graph and Niagara, while studying art direction principles to align my work with broader project visions.
Building Community: I joined game jam teams, contributed to indie projects, and engaged with industry groups like the [Game Art Collective]-turning isolation into collaboration.
Re-evaluating My ‘Why’: The experience reminded me that my passion lies in crafting emotion through visuals, regardless of studio size. I channeled this into my portfolio, creating cinematic VFX by Houdini simulation

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My job is working on VFX in gameplay and in-game cinematics, which is different from CG or movie production. Game VFX is all real-time rendered, so compared to simulation VFX, game VFX needs more performance-balanced artifacts and debug work during development. The most exciting work is testing in-game for your work, which requires you to immerse yourself in the game world and try to reach the highest quality bar on your own.
I usually work on weapons VFX, like magic spells some elements not exist in the world but need more creativity to create from scratch, but also need to align with environmental effects like thunderstorms, which I need to find more real-world references and you could also learn more about animation, rigging and scripting in the game depends on the task needs.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Based on my journey as a game VFX artist, especially through my experience from different projects, these three pillars are most impactful in my journey:
1. Technical tools experience for making artifacts: VFX sits at the intersection of art, code, and design. Mastering the art tools like Houdini and Substance Designer will let artists prototype faster and work with designers and engineers on a game engine based on particle systems. All those session needs experience on tool using.
2. Artistic eyes review your works: VFX mostly serves gameplay and story cinematics. Understanding and reviewing your work is a really important skill for better quality VFX, like feeling punchy for magic spells, colors let players feel the difference between healing effects, and damage effects.
3. Be active in the community & continue looking for new opportunities: Right now, you can learn more in the VFX community, and it’s also important to learn and find issues from those websites. Being active on LinkedIn also brings you more opportunities.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

For me, the deepest reward lies in crafting moments that emotionally resonate with players. VFX isn’t just eye candy-it’s the visual language of game feel. Whether it’s the weight of a sword swing, the awe of a spell explosion, or the tension in a stealth effect, we sculpt the feedback that tells players, ‘This matters. ‘There’s a unique thrill in solving creative-technical puzzles: How do I make this dragon’s breath feel scorching but readable? How can 500 particles convey sorrow? When players react to those effects-leaning into a dodge, gasping at a reveal, or feeling immersed in a world we’ve visually ‘sounded’—that’s the magic. We’re not just artists; we’re emotion engineers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://qiweiart.wixsite.com/website
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qiweiart