Sr Animator (External Development - Contract)

Join the award-winning team that created God of War

Santa Monica Studio is seeking an Animator to partner with the external development group for the development of a new unannounced title!

This is a hybrid role utilizing both your skills as an animator and ability to create character control rigs. Team members will actively work with multiple external animation studios to create high quality assets by providing them with animation feedback for both motion capture cleanup as well as keyframe animation. Additionally, you will facilitate to get their work added into the game engine, resolving technical issues, improving existing pipelines and providing feedback on character rig creation. As time and schedule permits, you will support the internal animation team by taking on your own animation tasks to help achieve Santa Monica’s signature quality.

The ideal candidate has the experience and knowledge required to create high quality animation in a game development environment, has a strong understanding of game animation pipelines and demonstrate the ability to collaborate with our external teams as well as our Animation Director and Leads to successfully ship a AAA game.

Responsibilities

• Regularly represent the studio in external animation related communication and discussion by mentoring and giving feedback to an external group of animators and riggers
• Work with the external development group to maintain strong relationships with external animation studios and ensure their success in working with our team to meet Santa Monica Studio standards
• Collaborate with the Animation Director, Leads and broader team to ensure delivered animation assets are of high quality and adhere to the vision of animation at the studio
• Oversee and be a filter for quality control for all incoming animation related deliveries of content - provide feedback for adjustments of clear mistakes before reviewing with the Animation Director and Animation Leads
• Communicate with external studios on how to develop, verify, and maintain animation rigs and skin weights for humanoids, creatures, and animated environmental objects.
• Create documentation for outsourcing animation pipeline guidelines, tutorials, examples, delivery expectations and assist in the integration of assets from external studios
• Advise on problem areas and help troubleshoot animation or rig problems with external partners
• Integrate delivered content directly into the game
• Partner with the production team to help track incoming assets and deliveries
• May serve as an artistic resource for overall product or studio needs - this includes, but is not limited to, conducting general research, developing cutting-edge techniques and testing new systems or tools, techniques, providing training, transmitting industry related information and conveying concerns

Requirements

• Minimum five years industry experience or related experience
• One or more published titles that feature high quality animation
• Reel or portfolio demonstrating animation skills and rigging ability
• High level of expertise with Maya
• Strong understanding of character creation and animation pipelines
• Good communication, organizational, time management and interpersonal skills
• Works under minimal direction to develop solutions for existing development or pipeline problems
• Interest in overcoming various challenges of working with multiple external animation groups
• Understanding of the Motion Capture pipeline, including facial capture and retargeting

Preferred Experience

• Experience working with MotionBuilder
• Experience using Shotgrid

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