Studio: Guerrilla Studios
Job Opening: Cinematic Animation Director
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Type: Full-Time
Responsibilities:
- Define and maintain the artistic direction for narrative animation, ensuring a consistent and expressive visual style across all story sequences.
- Lead and mentor a team of cinematic animators to craft high-quality, stylized keyframe animation that captures personality, emotion, and intent.
- Collaborate with artistic and technical stakeholders to enhance storytelling through animation, composition, timing, and pacing.
- Guide the creative breakdown of scripts and storyboards into emotional beats and character performances, supporting animators in interpreting direction into polished animation.
- Own the performance language of characters across cinematics, ensuring consistency in acting style, gesture, and tone.
- Supervise and review animation work regularly, providing clear and inspiring feedback while ensuring deliverables meet both aesthetic and narrative goals.
- Partner with external animation vendors when needed, setting expectations and maintaining quality control across all outsourced content.
- Work closely with technical teams to ensure that tools and workflows support expressive animation and seamless integration into our real-time engine.
Qualifications & Skills:
- Have at least 10 years of experience in animation, with a significant portion in a leadership or directorial role within games, feature animation, or TV series.
- Specialize in stylized keyframe animation and are confident directing nuanced performances that convey emotional depth and character intent.
- Have a strong understanding of cinematic language — including camera, framing, pacing, and visual continuity — and can apply it effectively in interactive narrative scenes.
- Are experienced in building, mentoring, and directing high-performing animation teams, and can offer actionable creative feedback that elevates both individuals and the final product.
- Have a strong eye for detail, storytelling instincts, and the ability to translate narrative objectives into compelling animated performance.
- Are deeply collaborative, comfortable interfacing with writers, cinematic designers, editors, and tech teams to ensure that the animation enhances and supports the story.
- Are proactive, organized, and adept at navigating production realities while never compromising on creative integrity.
- Possess expert knowledge of Maya (Motion Builder is a plus) and have experience with in-engine cinematic pipelines.
- Experience in anime-style or stylized Western 3D animation projects.
- Solid understanding of camera composition and editorial pacing for narrative scenes.
- Background in storyboarding or Previs for animation or cinematics.
- Familiarity with cinematic tools such as sequencers, timelines, or shot editors in real-time engines.
