Lead Animator
Creative Assembly
Horsham, United Kingdom
Job type: Permanent
Job Description
Creative Assembly are looking for a Lead Animator to join our team based at our studio in Horsham, West Sussex. This is a unique opportunity to work on our next major, historical feature.
As Lead Animator, you will bring creativity and passion to the team and work collaboratively with other disciplines to craft and implement believable in-game animations.
The ideal candidate for this role would be an established Lead or an experienced senior looking to advance their career into a Lead role.
Key Responsibilities
This is very much a hands-on role; you will be responsible for creating in-game animations whilst also overseeing, inspiring, and motivating a small team to create world-class animations.
You will, where necessary, help define realistic animation schedules, create relevant animation documentation, produce in-game animations, and ensure technical and artistic quality.
On a day-to-day basis, you will:
- Be responsible for managing the gameplay animation team
- Work with animators to create animations that bring the in-game characters and world to life
- Excellent communication, documentation, and scheduling skills
- Assist in planning and directing mocap shoots in our bespoke Mocap studio
- Engage in stand-ups, and collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams
- Ensure that the standard of your work is of the highest quality, judging it by its function and appearance in engine
- Take ownership of your tasks, from Maya to their final implementation in game
- Provide feedback and mentor less experienced team members, Communication, approachability, and proactivity is vital in this role.
Skills & Requirements
Knowledge, Skill and Experience
Essential
- Experience working as a 3D Animator in games
- Knowledge of animation implementation in-engine
- Proficient in Maya
- Able to clean and enhance mocap data
- Strong hand-key animation skills
- Excellent communication skills, able to work both independently and as part of a cross discipline team
- Ability to receive and apply critique and to contribute constructive feedback
- Able to lead and mentor animators of various levels of experience
- Self-Motivated with strong time-management skills
Desirable
- Experience developing a title from start to finish
- Interest in Historical Total War\Strategy Games
- Motion Capture experience
- Knowledge of rigging
- Motion Builder experience
- Experience of game engines such as Unreal, Unity
- Chinese martial arts experience
Note: Applications for this role must include a portfolio/showreel (or link to a portfolio/showreel). Applications that do not have this information will not be considered.
Additional Information
- Relocation assistance is offered
How to Apply
About the Company
Creative Assembly is one of the UK's leading games development studios, founded in 1987 and located in West Sussex, UK and in Sofia, Bulgaria. With a heritage of award-winning AAA titles, including the multi-million selling Total War™ series, Creative Assembly continues to build an impressive portfolio of games and world-renowned partnerships; working with Games Workshop on Total War™: WARHAMMER®, Wargaming Alliance on Total War™: ARENA, Twentieth Century Fox on Alien: Isolation, plus 343 Industries and Microsoft on Halo Wars 2. Creative Assembly has, with their exceptionally talented team of over 500, amassed a wealth of awards, including recent accolades from BAFTA, Music+Sound and Develop’s Industry Excellence awards.