Lead Technical Animator

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading entertainment company in the UK seeks a Technical Animation Lead to supervise and develop a team of animators. You will create high-quality character rigs, collaborate with art and animation teams, and advance animation pipelines. This hybrid position offers the opportunity to work remotely and in-office, contributing to innovative animation projects.

Qualifications

• Relevant rigging/technical animation experience required.
• Strong knowledge of Python scripting in Maya.
• Experience with engine animation (Unity/Unreal) preferred.

Responsibilities

• Supervise and create character and facial rigs.
• Lead and support technical animation team.
• Collaborate on technical challenges and improve workflows.

Skills

Rigging

Technical animation

Python in Maya

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Animation pipelines

Tools

Maya

Unity

Unreal

Motionbuilder

Job description

Overview

The role involves leading, supporting and developing our team of friendly and passionate technical animators. You'll also be applying your technical expertise directly by creating rigs, developing pipelines and collaborating with art and animation teams to solve all kinds of problems. Working closely with leads and directors, you'll be developing outstanding art assets with brilliant deformation alongside making easy to use tools for gaining efficiency and quality.

Responsibilities

• Supervise/create high quality character, body and facial rigs.
• Collaborate with the art and animation teams to assist on technical challenges and improve pipelines and processes.
• Integrate, research and develop new technologies and tools to advance quality, efficiency and adaptability of animation, rigging and art pipelines.
• Create schedules/roadmaps alongside the production team.
• Lead and support the technical animation team through hiring, mentoring and running 121s/appraisals.
• Create and manage documentation for tools and processes within animation and asset processes in the studio. Applicable understanding of anatomy and body mechanics.
• Relevant rigging/technical animation experience.
• Strong working knowledge of Python in Maya and coding standards and practices.
• Engine animation experience (Unity/Unreal).

Bonus Points

• Experience with gameplay technical animation - such as state machines, cloth, physics and ragdoll setups - particularly in Unreal.
• Experience with Jira and/or Shotgrid.
• Experience with Motionbuilder, motionbuilder API and mocap processes.
• Experience with facial rigging.
• Programming knowledge such as C++/Maya API & Plugin Writing.
• Interest and experience with machine learning.
• Knowledge of vector maths, linear algebra and matrices.

Working arrangement

Hybrid Working - This role is advertised as a Hybrid work model, that combines remote and in-office work, following our current company policy and to be agreed with your Line Manager. Subject to any applicable laws, WBD / your Line Manager reserves the right to change this working agreement where this is essential to business needs and upon reasonable notice to you.