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Lead OS Animator - Maxis

Locations: Onsite/Remote/Hybrid in most locations across North America and Canada

Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims , we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don’t settle for seeing the world only as it is but strive to build a world as it could be.

Teams are building the next generation game and creative platform, Project Rene and reimagining The Sims that players know and love with even more new ways to play.

We’re excited you’re interested to learn more about how you can join our team and dream big. Maxis is looking for a Senior Animator to lead our outsourcing efforts for the future. You will have the opportunity to establish the outsourcing pipeline and process for our team, partnering with your cross-disciplinary partners to deliver high quality animation content for our game. You will report to the Development Director of Animation.

Your Key Responsibilities:

• Creating a variety of high quality keyframe animations and owning their implementation from ideation through the testing and bug fixing.
• Working with the Director to ensure quality, animation style, and philosophy are maintained for work you or others produce.
• Elevating our discipline, by mentoring animators, creating learning material, and spreading knowledge across the animation team.
• Owning the design of complex animation trees, state machines, and driving innovative technical implementation to meet design objectives, creating documentation as necessary.
• Tracking and oversight of animation assets hook up to support great gameplay.
• Estimating and assisting in scoping exercises to ensure animation is able to meet production schedules.

Your Skills:

• Extensive experience as a seasoned gameplay animator contributing to all phases of game production on a AAA title
• Expert in creating full body keyframe animation with a primary emphasis on full body character performance in Maya
• Experience providing aesthetic feedback to a small group of Animators.
• Effective decision making defining and setting priorities for self or others as needed
• Excellent technical comprehension in relation to designing and implementing animation state machines in a game engine such as Unity, Unreal or similar.
• A keen eye in evaluating human/creature/object rigs for production
• Adaptable to new animation styles, in game animation production tools, workflows, and pipelines.
• Oral and written communication, keeping project stakeholders informed on project status and risks and collaborating with multidisciplinary groups such as: Design, Production, Engineering, Art, Modeling, VFX, and Audio
• A mindset that focuses on quality, collaboration, innovation, and accountability.

Additional Desirable Skills:

• Experience in motion capture workflows
• Proficient in project tracking software such as: Atlassian Confluence, Jira software, Shotgun or similar tools

More About Maxis:

Many team members have a tenure of over a decade. Here are some top reasons folks join our team and stay:

• Work life balance. We work diligently to ensure we make incredible products while prioritizing our team member’s wellbeing. We uphold a people first mentality.
• Commitment to diversity. We take immense pride in the diversity of our team members. We know unique perspectives and experiences are critical to our success as a team in order to produce the leading simulation game in the world.
• Creative autonomy. We firmly believe good ideas come from anywhere. Joining the team means contributing to the whole production process, from concept through final in game experience.
• Purpose. We provide meaningful content that impacts our player’s in game and real world experiences, motivating us to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
• Community. We thrive at Maxis because of our incredibly supportive and creative colleagues and players that bring fun and positivity into doing what we love.