This job might no longer be available.
Graduate Technical Animator
2 years ago
Frontier is an established, market leading independent developer and publisher of videogames for PC and consoles. Founded in 1994, we are based in the world-leading technology cluster and historic city of Cambridge, England. With a growing team of over 700 talented people, we are passionate about creating innovative genre-leading games and authentic worlds for our communities of players.
We have achieved serial successes across a wide variety of titles including Elite Dangerous , Planet Coaster , Jurassic World Evolution and Planet Zoo . We are continuing to grow our team to support our existing portfolio and an exciting and ambitious future roadmap, which includes the development of both own-IP titles and licensed-IP titles. Our IP-license partners include Universal (Jurassic World), Formula 1 and Games Workshop (Warhammer).We are also growing our team to continue the expansion of Frontier Foundry, our publishing label for games developed by carefully selected partner studios.
We have a modern spacious studio located on the Cambridge Science Park in the heart of the Cambridge tech hub. For those who wish to relocate to the Cambridge area and work either entirely in the studio or flexibly between the studio and home, we can provide generous financial and practical support to facilitate your move. We are also able to offer remote working for those who would prefer to work almost exclusively from home or who are unable to relocate. We can discuss your preferences with you during the recruitment process.
We have an exciting opportunity for a graduate technical animator to work within our highly experienced animation team. In this role, under the supervision of your lead, you will join our animation team, assisting the animation department with technical problem solving, as well as collaborating on tools and pipeline development.
Our catalogue of games has a wide range of requirements to fit different animation targets and art styles, and our animation pipelines and tools need to reflect that. With such a diverse set of needs, we require lateral thinking and flexibility to be able to get the best out of our animation team.
Great tools allow for great animation, and will play a huge part in the future success of the animation team. With games such as Planet Zoo leading the way, your passion will allow us to reach the levels of quality we strive for in our games.
Responsibilities:
- Taking direction from your lead to create scripts, tools and assist in pipeline development, to enable our animation team to make incredible animations
- Assist the animation team in integrating game assets, troubleshooting & batch processing
- Author python scripts and validation tests
- Technical problem solving during production
- Assist during all production stages to ensure that pipelines run smoothly
- Carrying out supporting rigging and technical tasks to ensure your work supports both our animators and our game assets
- Handle day-to-day issues that animation department may run into
About You
- An understanding of python scripting, Maya tools creation, and software principles that are required to develop animations and animation rigs
- Ability to discuss ideas and processes that will impact the end-users of our work
- An eye for rigging and animation
- Great analytical and problem solving skills
- A willingness to confidently take on and provide feedback for your own development and the development of others
- Experience using Maya
Qualification and Experience
- A showreel that demonstrates technical animation capabilities such as tools development or clear, technical problem solving
- Experience within Unreal, Unity or other games engines, with regards to technical animation or rigging
- Knowledge of QT & PySide
- Knowledge of other 3D animation packages (3ds max, Blender, XSI etc.)
- Knowledge of game development pipelines
- Experience working in games development
What we can offer you
We offer the chance to work with talented and passionate people, developing and publishing sophisticated and enduring games in a creative and collaborative environment. We love what we do, and we work hard to provide outstanding experiences for our player communities. Frontier rewards this passion and determination by sharing in the company’s success and by supporting our teams to keep doing what they love.
Well-being is a big focus at Frontier and we are continually evolving how we can support our staff. We encourage a healthy work/life balance and host a range of well-being activities, initiatives and sessions to support both mental and physical health.
We offer a competitive salary and
benefits package, which includes a success-based annual bonus, share option schemes, pension, life assurance, private family healthcare, flexitime working hours, enhanced maternity/paternity package, in-house subsidised catering, support with relocation, a Cycle to Work scheme and free bike servicing, and social events.
We welcome and encourage applications from qualified candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.
Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings.