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Senior Technical Gameplay Animator - Permanent

OVERVIEW

At PlayStation London Studio, we are on a mission to make award-winning, landmark games. Our upcoming PlayStation 5 online multiplayer game will be focused on a brand-new IP we are extraordinarily excited about.

Our new game is close to our hearts, as the whole team collaborated on coming up with the concept from the very beginning. We’ve seen this idea grow from a seed, and now we’re looking for new starters to continue our journey on shaping our plans for this AAA project.

We’re also a part of the PlayStation Studios family, a collective of teams - from Insomniac to Naughty Dog and many more. As such, we have solid support system – often knowledge sharing industry advancements so that all our studios, individually lead the way to create memorable gaming experiences.

About the Role

We are looking for a highly skilled Technical Gameplay Animator to join our team. Where they will take focus on supporting the development of our in-house animation engine, by researching, building as well as user testing animation networks, new features and tools required by the gameplay team to create high quality gameplay animation. We are looking for a highly motivated person with proven technical skills and experience working with the engineering teams as well as game development teams to push the boundaries of an engine that empowers our gameplay team to deliver high quality animation that complements our gameplay mechanics, responsiveness, and AI behaviour.

Working closely on our ground breaking proprietary animation and engine technologies offers a unique opportunity to use your creative and technical skill to truly define a next-generation multiplayer gameplay experience on PlayStation.

Scope of Work

• Research and develop Gameplay Animation Networks and Animation Systems based on the product requirements, design specifications, artistic vision of the game.
• Support development and improvement of our in-house animation technologies, with our Animation Engineers. Translating game design needs to requirements, features and systems that are technically coherent with our existing strategy and code.
• Help optimise and maintain our animation networks, tools and pipelines to ensure fluid playability, identify and report bugs or help to solve complex gameplay animation requirements and technical issues when required.
• Collaborate on setting technical, visual and gameplay constraints, complimenting the gameplay experience whilst ensuring a high level of quality for Art and Animation. For example, supporting and validating the visual aspect of new gameplay mechanics.
• Lead by example, taking ownership for a critical area of our gameplay animation. This involves both sharing knowledge across our teams and partners, but also responsibility for supporting planning, estimation and prioritisation of tasks, progress, and timeframes.
• Using our in-house animation tools, ability to use and condition mocap or animation data needed to build and test gameplay animation networks.
• Function as a team member or as a sub team lead, extracting requirements of the development team as well as advising them on techniques and systems that would further enhance gameplay and improve production.

Essential Knowledge / Experience

• Experience in technical implementation of gameplay animation. You have used game editors, scripting languages and game engines, with hands on experience of animation networks and state machines.
• Ability to recognise quality and excellence in gameplay animation and advise on reaching AAA quality from a technical animation point of view.
• Proven to be able to deliver on gameplay moments that are fun, responsive and meet the highest standards of quality, performance, and polish.
• Strong understanding of animation and mocap production pipelines and content creation packages, such as Maya, MotionBuilder

Desirable Knowledge & Skills

• Strong understanding of animation principals and fundamentals, being able to craft across a broad range of styles from dynamic stylisation to realistic body mechanics
• Experience in scripting to help, automate and optimize our pipelines and networks
• Work to understand the advantages and limitations of proprietary technologies when designing pipelines (memory, GPU, and CPU performance).
• Experience producing high quality key-frame animation (great sense of weight, timing, and strong posing)

Impact and Complexity

High quality, captivating characters are a signature of PlayStation Studio titles. Our Animation teams are fundamental to bringing our characters to life, bridging creative, technical and design fields they marry together art and science to allow us to deliver on this expectation.

This is a fundamental role in our animation and gameplay teams not just in setting standards and best practise, but it shares a key responsibility in giving our millions of players a unique, responsive and next-generation multiplayer gameplay experience on PlayStation.

Supervision

Senior Animators bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise, they are the pillars of our teams. They have no people management responsibilities. But they are the role models and voices of their teams, and it is expected that they lead by example, mentor, inspire and support more junior members of the team.

In taking charge of large areas of the projects, Senior Animators will be responsible for supervising quality and completion of supporting artists and partners.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We encourage you to bring your best-unaltered self to work. Inclusivity is one of our studio values, which means we embrace different perspectives to fuel our creativity and we know that our games are stronger for it!

It is important to us that our teams are passionate about diversity and inclusion. They must understand that these words speak to people’s lived experiences that may differ to their own. We encourage our teams to educate themselves and show support and their commitment to DE&I (diversity, equity, and inclusion). As an example, some of our outreach activities include giving talks, mentoring, speaking at schools, running roundtables and much more.

We therefore welcome applications from all groups who are underrepresented in the games industry. We can offer training to upskill our team, so if you don’t feel you meet 100% of the job criteria, we still strongly encourage you to apply and look forward to hearing from you.

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Our roles can be flexible in terms of work location in the UK. We will consider the individual’s preference for hybrid, remote or onsite working. We may be able to support remote working from a selection of other countries depending on location and the role you're applying to, so please reach out to see if that could be a possibility. If you wish to relocate to the UK and require sponsorship, we can support you with the visa process.

We have so many benefits, and we felt that if we listed them all out here it might look like we are bragging! What we can say is that we have you covered, from health and wellbeing, to finance and personal development, there is something there for everyone! If you would like to know more head to our benefits and perks page!