Technical Animator - Creature Specialist

Mob Entertainment is a startup multimedia studio that is best known for our hit indie horror game "Poppy Playtime".  This franchise is one of the hottest new properties in gaming, and our team is naturally expanding as our ambition expands.  To give a taste of our brand's popularity, more than 100 billion YouTube views of Poppy Playtime related content have occured since the game's launch 4 years ago. 

We are seeking a highly skilled Technical Animator with expertise in rigging and character development to join our tech art team. This role focuses on implementing dynamic rigs and systems to support creature and monster animations for cinematic and real time gameplay. The ideal candidate will excel at rigging in Maya, and will seamlessly transition those assets into Unreal Engine 5.5, leveraging its advanced animation tools to bring imaginative creatures and monsters to life. If you’re passionate about the overlap of technical problem solving and the art of animation, we want to hear from you!

Key Responsibilities:

• Rigging in Maya: Design and build medium complexity rigs for creatures and monster characters in Maya.  Ensure optimized skinning practices and user functionality for the animation team.
• Dynamic Character Features: Develop systems for procedural animations, secondary motion, and physics-driven elements to enhance creature realism and interactivity.
• Unreal Implementation: Utilize basic Unreal animation features (animation blueprints, animation montages, control rig, blendspaces, anim notifies, ect) to implement either cinematic or real time characters systems.
• Object Oriented Practices: Ensure good class structures are maintained.  An example of this would be keeping all generic character behavior in a parent class, and isolating unique behavior to sub classes, or systems.  
• Communication: Collaborate with Technical Animation Lead to ensure all projects are built in a unified pipeline, and take feedback from both the design and animation teams to ensure work is meeting technical needs while staying faithful to the character design.  
• Advanced Animation Systems: Understand and imagine how more advanced Unreal systems (motion matching, stride warping, distance matching ect) might be applied.

Required Skills & Qualifications:

• Experience: 3+ years of professional experience as a Technical Animator
• Maya Proficiency: Expert level knowledge of Animation tooling within Maya, including rigging, skinning, blend shapes, with a strong portfolio showcasing a variety of rigs built from scratch.
• Unreal Engine Proficiency: In-depth understanding of Unreal’s animation pipeline, including Control Rig, Animation Blueprints, Anim Notifies, State Machines, and Animation Montages.
• Programming: Basic programming understanding, including class hierarchies, functions, loops and conditions.
• Team Player: Ability to collaborate effectively with multiple departments, meeting their needs while still staying within a structured technical framework.
• Portfolio: A demo reel or portfolio showcasing rigs, Unreal Engine animation setups, and dynamic character implementations.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with creature or monster development
• Animation experience
• Facial mocap systems
• Python/Pymel or C++
• Understanding of animation principles in shaders 
• Understanding of vector math
• Familiarity with anatomy, and how it applies in rigging
• Experience with hair or cloth simulation
• Any “generalist” game developer skills

Why Join Us?

• Dynamic and interesting character and creature projects… this isn’t another humanoid animation system!
• Contribute to a growing studio that has captured the imagination of the internet with its lore and storytelling.
• Work remotely with a friendly and engaged group of coworkers who love what they do.
• Stay on top of the latest and greatest of what Unreal has to offer.

How to Apply:

Please submit your resume, a link to your portfolio/demo reel (featuring rigs and Unreal Engine work), and a brief cover letter.

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Mob Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion or religious creed, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, marital status, family or parental status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. All employment decisions are based on a person’s merit, business needs, and role requirements. If you require further accommodations or have questions regarding accessibility of our roles, please reach out to info@mobentertainment.com