Senior Animator & Rigger

We are looking for a Senior Animator & Rigger with a blend of strong technical skills in rigging, animation, who can join our team and hit the ground running! At Stellar we’re working on a new AAA racing title, and we need someone to take our awesome vehicles, characters and environments and Rig, Skin and Animate them to bring them to life.

As a Senior Animator & Rigger, you will be responsible for all the vehicle, character and environmental animations, collaborating with the Art Director and Art Leads to strive for consistent quality across the game.

Within This Role You Will

• Collaborate with the Art Director in realising the animation style and direction for the project.
• Setup and maintain animator friendly rigs for different types of vehicles and characters (mostly creatures but some humanoid).

• Strong skills and understanding of animation principles for realistic mechanics.

• Strong showreel to show the ability to rig and animate a wide range of different vehicles and creatures.

• Able to extract both organic and robotic result from same set of animations.

• Strong experience working with Unreal Engine 5 using blueprints for vehicle rigs.

• Work closely with the tech artist to be aware of performance limitations and provide skeletons which offer good balance between animation quality and performance.

• Work directly with the vehicle team to check and provide feedback with all the requirements for the models in terms of realistic functionality and proper topology to achieve it.

• Work with the production team to define, schedule, prioritise, assign and regularly follow up on tasks with regards to deliverables across all the stages of the project.

• Create clear documentation of approaches, both technical and creative for animation.

• Define, prioritise, assign and regularly follow up on tasks and the advancement of the team’s work regarding deliverables.

This role is available working hybrid days in office (Guildford or Utrecht)

#LI-Hybrid

Requirements

You'll have

• A minimum of 5 years of character animation and rigging experience in video games.
• Proficiency in UE4/5 and experience with game Engines

• Experienced in retargeting existing animations.

• Strong skills and understanding of animation principles for realistic mechanics.

• Strong showreel to show the ability to rig and animate a wide range of different vehicles and creatures.

• Able to extract both organic and robotic results from same set of animations.

• Strong experience working with Unreal Engine 5 and Blueprints.

• Ability to receive, seek and provide constructive criticism.

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills in English

• Strong knowledge of traditional animation principles and how they can be used to enhance gameplay.

• Demonstrable experience in creating animation and rigging of a high standard while maintaining visual and functional specifications for game mechanics.

• Knowledge of at least one major 3D package (i.e., Maya or 3DSMax)

• Industry Experience: AAA game’s experience

Benefits

• International AAA game projects
• Access to cutting-edge hardware
• Flexible/hybrid working
• Great increasing holiday benefits including Christmas Shutdown
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• Private Healthcare Plan including dental and optical support, mental health, online GP
• Pension Plan
• Life Assurance
• Flu Jab Vouchers
• Regular Team Incentives and Social Events
• Brand new Guildford office
• Opportunities to work with our Netherlands office