Animator

Analog; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 120,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Analog is seeking an Animator who can make characters feel alive in three seconds of motion for real-time 3D, AR and VR experiences. You will animate daily, sitting near riggers, 3D artists and engineers, and delivering into Unity or Unreal as live in-engine motion rather than a rendered pass.

Bring 3–5 years of professional character animation, mastery of Maya, and a showreel showing your contribution. You will collaborate across teams, test rigs, and support motion capture to raise the quality

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of professional experience as a character/3D animator.
• Strong keyframe animation skills in Autodesk Maya.
• Showreel demonstrating polished character/creature performance with clear personal contribution.

Responsibilities

• Create high-quality keyframe animation for real-time, interactive characters and creatures with strong personality.
• Animate cycles, transitions, interactions and performance beats to a final standard.
• Prepare and export animation into Unity, working inside engine and performance budgets.
• Collaborate with riggers, 3D artists and engineers to unblock animation dependencies.
• Support motion capture sessions and clean up captured data as needed.
• Maintain and extend existing animation sets with consistent style.

Skills

Character animation

Keyframe animation

Unity/Unreal experience

Tools

Autodesk Maya

Job description

Analog is looking for an Animator who can make a character feel alive in three seconds of motion. Not a pose, not a technically correct cycle, but a performance that lands before anyone reads a word of copy.

You will animate characters and creatures for real time 3D, AR and VR experiences, and deliver into Unity or Unreal. This is a hands on individual contributor role. You will animating every day, sitting close to riggers, 3D artists and engineers, and seeing your work run live rather than rendered out and forgotten.

What you’ll do

Character Animation

• Create high-quality keyframe animation for real-time, interactive characters and creatures, with strong personality.

• Animate cycles, transitions, interactions and one off performance beats to a polished, final standard.

• Apply expert understanding of timing, weight, spacing, arcs, posing, staging, anticipation, follow-through and appeal. Iterate quickly while maintaining a consistently high quality bar

Real Time Delivery

• Prepare and export animation into Unity, working inside engine and performance budgets.

• Work with engineers on animation state machines, transitions, blend trees/spaces, looping behaviour and runti Maintain consistent naming conventions, file structures, frame ranges and export settings in line with pipeline standards.

Collaboration

• Partner with riggers early, stress test rigs and give clear feedback on controls, deformation and usability.

• Work with 3D Artist and engineers to unblock animation dependencies.

• Support motion capture sessions and clean up captured data where needed.

• Maintain and extend existing animation sets without losing consistency of style.

• Build reference libraries and study live action, human and animal motion to raise the bar on quality.

What you bring

• Three to five years of professional experience as a character or 3D animator.

• Strong keyframe animation skills in Autodesk Maya.

• A showreel demonstrating polished character or creature performance with clear evidence of your own contribution.

• Solid command of animation principles: timing, weight, spacing, arcs, staging and appeal.

• Experience delivering animation into Unity or Unreal.

• Comfortable working with rigs and raising rigging issues constructively.

• Ability to take direction, iterate quickly and deliver to a high standard within production deadlines. Ability to take direction, iterate at pace and hit delivery dates.

• Clear communication and collaborative approach.

Nice to Have

• Shipped games, AR or VR titles, or high end interactive experiences.

• Motion capture cleanup experience.

• Facial animation or lip sync work.

• Familiarity with Blender and/or iClone.

Showreel Requirement

Applicants must submit a showreel or portfolio link that clearly shows:

• Finished character or creature animation rather than work in progress passes.

• Your specific contribution to each shot.

• A range of performance: body mechanics, acting and interaction.

Analog is building things the world has not seen before, and animation is a big part of how people first connect with and experience them.