Animation Director
UK Remote or West Midlands Based – Birmingham/Worcestershire Area
Please Note: We welcome applicants that prefer to work from home, so please get in touch!
Position Overview:
We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Animation Director to lead the animation team in creating captivating and immersive animations and cinematic sequences for our co-dev and internal projects. As the Animation Director, you will play a pivotal role in defining animation styles, maintaining quality standards, driving cinematic quality and ensuring that animations seamlessly integrate with gameplay mechanics. You will collaborate closely with other directors, designers, and artists to bring our game worlds to life through fluid and expressive animations.
Responsibilities:
Cinematic Direction and Strategy:
- Define the high-level visions and styles for animation and cinematics across multiple projects, aligning with the overall artistic direction and narrative goals.
- Develop animation and cinematic pipelines, processes, and best practices to ensure efficiency and consistency across the team.
- Collaborate with art/creative/design directors, alongside production, to ensure that animations and cinematics enhance storytelling and player immersion.
Team Leadership and Management:
- Lead and inspire a team of animators, providing mentorship, guidance, and feedback to foster growth and skill development.
- Set clear expectations, goals, and priorities for the animation team, ensuring alignment with project milestones and deadlines.
- Conduct regular performance reviews and provide constructive feedback to team members to support their professional development.
- Work with cinematic designers, team leads and directors to create, iterate and finalise any cinematic sequences.
Animation Production:
- Oversee the creation and pipelines for high-quality animations, including keyframe animation, motion capture integration, procedural animation techniques, skinning, rigging, weight-painting and any other relevant techniques.
- Work closely with animators to provide creative direction, solve technical challenges, and maintain consistency in animation quality.
- Collaborate with technical animators, technical artists and engineers to implement animations into the game engine, ensuring optimal performance and functionality.
- Where needed, research new animation technologies through R&D processes and integrate them into existing and new pipelines.
Quality Assurance and Iteration:
- Conduct regular animation reviews and provide feedback to ensure that animations meet quality standards and align with the project vision.
- Iterate on animations based on feedback from stakeholders, playtesting sessions, and usability testing to refine and polish character movements.
- Define what the “definitions of done” are for a project and use these as a communication tool for the team and stakeholders throughout the development process.
Client Relationship Building:
- Build and maintain relationships with existing clients, whilst using the support of the animation team to deliver confident and consistent high-quality delivery to projects.
- Collaborate with new potential clients to understand their specifications and requirements, to help secure more projects for the company.
Requirements:
- Experience: A minimum of 7+ years of experience as an Animator in the video game industry, with a proven track record of contributing to successful game projects.
- Portfolio: A comprehensive portfolio showcasing your animation and/or cinematic expertise, including examples of various animation styles and relevant game-related work.
- Leadership Skills: Proven leadership and management skills, with the ability to inspire and motivate a team of animators and cinematic designers to achieve excellence.
- Analytical and Critical Thinking: Strong analytical and critical thinking skills to assess and improve animation styles, art direction and player feedback.
- Collaborative Mindset: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate seamlessly within cross-disciplinary teams and provide effective guidance.
- Passion for Gaming: A deep passion for video games and a keen understanding of animation impact on players immersion.
- Technical Proficiency: Expertise in animation software such as Maya, 3ds Max, or Blender, as well as experience with game engines like Unreal Engine or Unity.
- Creative Vision: A strong artistic vision and creative sensibility, with the ability to develop and communicate a cohesive animation style that aligns with the project’s artistic direction.
- Adaptability: Ability to adapt to changing project requirements and priorities, and to work effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Desirable Skills
- Experience in pitch deck creation and presenting.
Portfolio
Please send through any relevant documents/links to your CV, cover letter and/or portfolio. If your examples are from previous works with another studio, please make sure samples are cleared for release by copyright owners. Links to an online portfolio are preferable, otherwise we accept showreels via Dropbox or other secure sharing platforms.
Please send applications to: careers@flixinteractive.com.
What We Offer
Based just outside Birmingham, Flix offers a friendly, nurturing work environment with the opportunity to build games as part of an extremely talented, ambitious studio. The team is made up of welcoming, passionate, active gamers that support one another in all aspects of development.
We also offer the following;
- Private healthcare
- Additional time off over Christmas on top of standard holidays
- Bonus scheme
- Team outings and events
- Summer BBQ + Christmas Party
If you have the drive and skills for making games and think you have what it takes to work within our team then we’d love to hear from you.
For more information visit our site – www.flixinteractive.com
