Senior Technical Animator

Playground Games Limited; Royal Leamington Spa; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a passionate team at a leading Xbox Game Studio, dedicated to rebooting the beloved Fable franchise. As a Senior Technical Animator, you'll collaborate with animation and engineering teams to create cutting-edge character rigs and animation solutions. Your expertise will drive the development of innovative pipelines, ensuring top-tier character production. This role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to world-class games in a supportive and inclusive environment. If you're excited about animation and gaming, this is the perfect place to showcase your talents and grow your career.

Benefits

Relocation Assistance

Qualifications

• 3+ years as a Senior Technical Animator with AAA titles.
• Strong portfolio showcasing animation rigs and tools development.

Responsibilities

• Create advanced character rigs and deformation solutions.
• Develop tools for internal animation and character pipelines.
• Setup animation networks in proprietary engine.

Skills

Rigging

Scripting

Simulation

Runtime Animation Systems

Problem Solving

Maya

Python

C++

Tools

Animation Tools

Proprietary Engine

Job description

Playground Games is looking for a Senior Technical Animator to join our Fable team.

About us:

As a first-party Xbox Game Studio, we are passionate about making genre-defining games that are accessible, beautiful, and, most of all, fun. We are excited to be rebooting the much-loved Fable franchise and are expanding our diverse team to create a new classic in the action RPG genre.

About the role:

As Senior Technical Animator, you will be working with the Technical Animation team contributing to the wider Character group to bring best in class characters to Fable. You will work with the animation, character art, technical art and engineering teams to devise animation solutions and pipelines, create rigs for animators and assist in developing our animation and character workflows. Your strong analytical ability and planning skills will help the studio develop future proof rigging/animation pipelines and tools for character and animation production.

Our ideal candidate is a Senior Technical Animator who is passionate about their craft, skilled in rigging, scripting, simulation, and runtime animation systems and has the track record to prove it.

This is role based at our state-of-the-art facilities in Royal Leamington Spa. We have a hybrid work model in place with a minimum of 3 days a week in studio. Relocation assistance is available if required.

What you’ll do:

• Create advanced character rigs and deformation solutions.
• Create tools to improve/support our internal animation and character pipelines.
• Setup animation networks and implement animated content in our custom, proprietary engine.
• Problem solve and build innovative solutions to help realise best in class characters.

What you’ll bring:

• At least 3 years of experience as a Senior Technical Animator, with demonstrable work on at least 1 published title (ideally AAA).
• An outstanding portfolio demonstrating your animation rigs, tools development, or runtime solutions for AAA titles.
• Strong knowledge and experience of rigging and deformation in Maya.
• Solid Python scripting knowledge (plugin development with Python/C++ would be a distinct advantage).
• A positive outlook and a problem-solving mindset.
• A genuine passion for video games.

This is a fantastic opportunity to make world-class games with an established, talented, and collaborative team at one of the industry’s most exciting first-party game studios.

Playground Games is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, we believe that diversity and inclusion fuels creativity. We are dedicated to creating a safe, comfortable and welcoming working environment.

We strive to build an inclusive culture that encourages, supports and celebrates the diverse voices of our team members. It drives our innovation and connects us closer to our players. We are committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion across age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

At Playground Games we recognise the importance of self-development, career progression, well-being and retention of our colleagues. We celebrate difference and welcome everyone to join us and to be themselves at work.

If you require any reasonable accommodation to apply for this position, please contact us on [e-mail]