Studio: Phoenix Labs
Job Opening: Animation Director
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Type: Full-Time
Responsibilities:
- Work with the Art Director and Design Director to define the animation tone and style for a new IP title.
- Create and implement immersive third-person, hand-keyed animations with a strong focus on melee and close-range combat.
- Support early gameplay prototyping by generating and implementing animation blockouts
- Craft cohesive, polished animations that deliver a strong experiential value to players
- Collaborate with directors to define a high quality bar for animation that balances visual fidelity with gameplay fidelity and technical constraints.
- Contribute in establishing and maintaining the foundational animation systems in Unreal Engine 5.
- Participate in collaborative discussions and reviews to help shape the vision of the project.
Qualifications & Skills:
- 5+ years experience in video game development.
- Ability to quickly blockout animations for prototyping as well as carry animations through to a final high-quality polish
- Ability to hand-key character and creature animations without a reliance on mocap data.
- Ability to define, communicate, and champion discipline best practices.
- Expert working knowledge of Maya or equivalent animation software.
- Strong grasp of foundational animation principles like weight, timing, staging, and body mechanics.
- The ability and willingness to mentor and support associate and mid-level animators on improving their craft.
- Excellent cross-discipline communication skills and the ability to work well within a highly creative and collaborative team.
- A positive, pragmatic mindset with the ability to identify and communicate potential problem spaces and solutions
- Self-motivated individual who can proactively identify new tasks without supervision.
- The ability to provide and accept constructive feedback.
- An animation reel or portfolio demonstrating real-time 3D combat animations
Preferred:
- Experience using UE4 animation blueprints
- Experience in developing animations across a variety of platforms with differing technical constraints.
- Experience developing a breadth of creature and/or environment animations.
- Knowledge on how to model and/or rig 3D characters.
- Experience collaborating with VFX and audio disciplines as an animator.
- Familiarity with iterative Agile workflow and principles.
Apply for the Job Online: To apply, visit https://phxlabs.ca/careers/5012567003/