Senior Technical Animator

Who We Are: 

Founded by an MMO legend who has led AAA teams for over 20 years, our new studio Fantastic Pixel Castle (FPC) is building an original fantasy IP from scratch. Players will be regularly engaged in our development process from early stages as part of our open and transparent studio culture, and we aim to craft an IP that will be worthy of their passion and dedication for decades to come. 

We are committed to being a fully remote and global studio so we can hire world-class people and have them live their best lives. We believe top-heavy bureaucracy stifles creativity, so we aim to stay small as we focus on delivering a game and a world that players will love. We are fully-funded, and the team will share in all of our studio's future successes. We're seeking talented and passionate teammates to join us in our journey, so we encourage you to apply if you're interested, even if you're not sure you check all the boxes.

Position Overview:

As a Senior Technical Animator, you will be a core team member to help the vision of our game’s visual aesthetic become a reality. You will work closely with our Art Director, Principal Technical Animator, Principal Animator, Designers, and Engineers to create a diverse range of iconic characters, unique creatures, and help develop and refine our asset pipeline from Prototype, into Pre-Production, and through launch and live support. 

This is a hands-on role where you will be helping the team push the boundaries of aesthetic quality while respecting and helping to enforce the project's performance goals for an MMO.

You will help set standards, create rigs for our characters and creatures, build a gear system that can help share assets across any character or NPC, share your knowledge with our internal developers and external partners, and streamline our content creation process. You will execute at a world-class level, helping to bring memorable characters and unique creatures to life for our upcoming MMO, codenamed GHOST.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of experience in the video game industry
• Must have contributed in a hands-on role, where you helped drive the pipeline and tool discussions for animation and asset creation teams, while also having the ability to follow through with solutions for pipelines that ultimately scaled the game
• Proven experience as in a Senior Technical Artist or Technical Animator on a AAA game
• Experience setting up rigs and skinning a multitude of assets such as characters, creatures, hero-props, etc.
• Proficiency with Autodesk Maya, MotionBuilder, Control Rig, etc.
• Proficiency with the latest animation and rigging tools within Unreal 5.5 and 5.6
• A portfolio demonstrating exceptional technical skills, showcasing your key contribution to AAA titles supporting the animations, character, or creature asset pipelines in a variety of ways within an Unreal workflow

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with the Art, Animation, Engineering and Design teams to ensure high-quality 3D character and animation assets are delivered on time and within technical/performance specifications in Unreal 5+
• Drive the pipeline and tools discussion for animation and asset creation teams, and have the ability to follow through with solutions for pipelines that can scale with the game
• Create and implement animation systems in UE5+ using animation blend trees and montages, design and implement animation state machines/behaviors, IK, and runtime solutions
• Seek ways to improve and streamline art pipelines, enhance quality, increase team efficiency, and ultimately ensure performance of a variety of assets that will be in the game
• Foster strong and transparent communication channels with internal artists and external partners, providing clear feedback, guidance, and support

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience working on character customization and animation pipelines in an MMO or RPG is a big plus!

• Proficiency with scripting in both MEL and Python, and in tool development with the abilities to address complex technical challenges in the 3D asset pipeline
• A wide range of experience from hand-animating assets, to integrating new tools to create animations, and implementing animation state machines in Unreal Engine
• Experience establishing practices and tools that will be used by internal and external teams
• Experience collaborating with external partners, participating in the maintaining and expanding of character rigs and tools
• Research, knowledge, and development of the latest tools, rigging techniques, and workflows
• Engine-side animation systems creation, animation and physics management, character set-up in engine, and overseeing the scope of how animation is implemented/managed in blueprints/animation and blueprints/data
• Can create prototype assets (the whole loop) rig skin animate engine implementation/setup (You may be a pseudo animation programmer) 

US Salary Band: $86,000 - 148,000 USD

Canada Salary Band: $90,000 - 130,000 CAD