Real-Time Character Animator: Expressive Facial & Performance

Apple; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple in Cupertino seeks a highly skilled Character Animator to craft high-quality, stylized performances with emphasis on expression and facial animation. You will contribute to next-generation interactive computing using Maya within real-time pipelines.

Collaborate with engineers, designers and directors while exploring new technologies to push animation excellence and deliver polished results across platforms.

Qualifications

• Solid grasp on the traditional principles of animation.
• Experience in expressive facial animation.
• Expert level knowledge of Autodesk Maya.
• Understanding of technical constraints in real-time environments.
• Great at providing and receiving feedback.
• Ensure animations run efficiently across target platforms and use cases, both real time with frame rate budgets and non-real time.

Responsibilities

• Create compelling character performances using creative and stylized animation techniques.
• Develop expressive facial animation that conveys emotion and personality.
• Collaborate with directors and technical teams on animation pipelines and workflows.
• Explore emerging animation technologies and techniques.
• Work with motion capture data to create polished, performance-driven animation.
• Ensure animation quality meets real-time performance requirements.

Skills

Animation principles

Facial animation

Autodesk Maya

Real-time constraints

Feedback

Performance

Tools

USD workflow

Motion capture

Unity/Unreal

Job description

Apple in Cupertino seeks a highly skilled Character Animator to craft high-quality, stylized performances with emphasis on expression and facial animation. You will contribute to next-generation interactive computing using Maya within real-time pipelines.

Collaborate with engineers, designers and directors while exploring new technologies to push animation excellence and deliver polished results across platforms.