Principal Gameplay Animator

Description :

Principal Gameplay Animator

Bangalore (WFO - 6 Days)

About the Role :

We are looking for an experienced and technically strong keyframe Principal/Lead Animator to join our team for an exciting third-person mobile shooter game.

As the animation lead, you will own and drive the animation vision, style, and execution across the game.

You will be hands-on in creating high-quality animations while also troubleshooting complex animation challenges, and working closely with engineers, game designers, and artists to ensure our characters move with style, clarity, and impact.

Key Responsibilities :

- Animation Pipeline Ownership: Work across the full animation production linefrom rigging and skinning to implementation and integration in Unity delivering polished, optimized content.

- Hand-Keyed Animations: Create high-quality, stylized hand-keyed animations for a third-person mobile shooter, including locomotion (walk, run, sprint), combat, and interaction sequences.

- Animation Transitions: Create smooth blending and transition animations between different actions to ensure fluid, natural movement between different actions.

- Consistency in Animation Style: Define and maintain a consistent animation style across all characters and assets, aligning with the overall visual direction of the game.

- Unity Integrations: Implement, optimize and integrate animations using Unity's animation controller and player settings. Work directly with engineers and designers to build and maintain animation state machines

- Rigging: Build, maintain, and improve rigs and skin meshes. Update rigs to support new animations and improve animation quality.

- Skinning Costumes: Work on skinning and integrating various costumes and character models, ensuring they animate correctly.

- Bug Identification & Fixes: Proactively identify and fix animation-related issues, maintaining visual quality and gameplay feel throughout development. Knowledgeable in Unity animation debugging tools

Hard Skills :

- Proficiency in Maya and MotionBuilder: Advanced skills in both Maya and MotionBuilder for creating and refining stylized animations. Uses modern animation workflow and tools to work quickly and efficiently.

- Strong Understanding of Maya Layers: Good understanding of using layers in Maya for animation, allowing for efficient organization and management of complex scenes.

- Unity Expertise: Strong understanding of Unity, particularly in using animation controllers and configuring player settings and state machines. Strong understanding of how animations are integrated in a game engine.

- Rigging & Skinning: Proficient in character rigging and skinning, ensuring smooth and natural animations within the stylized framework.

- Animation Principles: In-depth knowledge of animation principles, including posing, timing, spacing, and weight.

- Technical Troubleshooting: Ability to debug and resolve animation-related issues within game engines.

- Adaptability with Emerging Tools: Willingness to learn and implement animation using new tools, software, and AI technologies like Cascadeur, Move AI, and Deepmotion to enhance workflow and animation quality.