jobby: Animation Director, Tactic Studios, Remote – Ontario Preferred

Animation Director

We are looking for a talented and experienced animation director to join our project and lead a team of animators in creating dynamic and lifelike animations. It is a multiplayer, third-person game with a contemporary setting.

A successful candidate will be a skilled and motivated animation director with both managerial experience and creative vision, able to direct a team of talented animators in creating engaging yet functional character animations for a multiplayer game.

NOTE: For the foreseeable future, all positions at Tactic Studios will be performed remotely, working from home. We are flexible to accommodate the unique needs you may have to ensure a productive, healthy work environment under the present circumstances. Candidates local to Ontario, Canada are preferred, but this is not a requirement.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of animators, assigning tasks, reviewing work, and providing clear, fair, and honest feedback.
• Provide leadership and mentoring to animators, fostering a productive team capable of meeting deadlines and achieving artistic goals.
• Work with the other leading members of the art and design teams to determine a direction and vision for the style of animations to support the greater vision of the product.
• Collaborate with programmers and technical animators to determine and implement an efficient and functional animation asset creation pipeline.
• Direct actors during motion capture sessions to produce high quality, usable gameplay and cinematic animations.
• Hands on work creating full body animations for in game character actions and real-time cinematics.
• Create compelling and expressive facial animations.
• Modify animations based on artistic or technical feedback.

Requirements

• Prior experience as a lead or animation director on a successful modern 3D game.
• Experience hiring, interviewing, forming and managing a highly functional animation team.
• Expertise creating 3D animations in 3DS Max or Maya.
• Experience using motion capture hardware and software.
• Keen understanding of how to create first person and third person gameplay animations.
• Comfortable creating a full sets of movement animations for biped humans, quadripeds, birds, and a variety of other creatures.
• Comfortable producing cinematics that involve interactions between multiple characters.
• Able to produce a full range of facial expressions and realistic lip synchronization using morph targets / blend shapes.
• Motivated self-starter with exceptional creative vision, leadership skills, and strong communication ability.
• Passionate about developing high quality video games.

Bonus Skills

• Experience with Motionbuilder.
• Experience using modern 3D game engines such as Unreal or Unity.
• Experience with rigging, skinning, and scripting.

How to Apply

You will need to provide:

• Portfolio or demo reel demonstrating several character animations you have created. (required)
• Resume detailing your experience. (required)
• Cover letter. (preferred)
• References. (preferred)
• Send the aforementioned items either by link or as an attachment to jobs@tacticstudios.com, subject “Animation Director”.