Principal Animator

Principal Animator

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Polyarc is searching for an experienced Principal Animator to bring our characters to life.

As a Principal Animator, you will discover ways for our players to connect with our characters by translating personalities, thoughts, and motivations into robust keyframed performances. At Polyarc, Animators contribute to character direction and system design through all stages of development; you will work in partnership with all development disciplines to balance the needs of our players within small team constraints in a highly collaborative environment.

Leveraging your artistic skills, technical understanding, and speed, you will make readable, reusable, and forward thinking systems while encouraging iteration through your art. Using our unique and ever-evolving tool workflow, built upon keyframe poses and space switching, you will also realize entirely new ways to craft believable character performances.

If you're looking for a studio committed to collaboration, mentorship, accountability, player value, and creative expression, Polyarc might be the place for you!

Responsibilities:

• Create high-quality keyframe animation performances, demonstrating physicality with appealing, believable, and nuanced acting choices.
• Fully integrate a unique animation workflow to consistently produce high fidelity animations quickly.
• Improve animation tools and systems over time to amplify the animation team’s output and players’ connection to our characters and immersive worlds.
• Identify opportunities (e.g., story, gameplay, etc.) and leverage collaborative iteration and feedback to evolve the overall vision of our games and support project momentum.
• Balance trade off decisions when scoping and cutting to maximize overall impact in service of the game, project team, and players in coordination with Animation leadership.
• Integrate technical implementation and understanding (e.g., rigging) and workflow understanding (e.g., vfx and audio dependencies, character understanding) to ensure an animation-inclusive development pipeline.
• Drive alignment through clear communication, quickly prototyping, and healthy exploration mindful of the team’s collective direction and capacity.

Qualifications:

• Experience using a game engine including state machines, importing/exporting animation data, an understanding of gameplay systems & implementation methods.
• Firm understanding of gameplay animation design demonstrated through personally crafted, robust animations performances in a portfolio or demo reel.
• Strong understanding of keyframe animation principles, with a willingness to learn and fully integrate new tools and workflows.
• Active, passionate interest in all aspects of game creation, from cinematics to combat systems, from rigging to narrative support.
• Excellent collaborator with a willingness to provide and accept player-focused feedback while working within a small development team to find solutions.
• The proven ability to scope and plan the animation process from preproduction to ship.

Pluses:

• Experience using Unreal Engine.
• Experience with a modular, temporary rigging workflow.
• Experience with rigging/scripting in Mel or Python

We believe all the listed qualifications are important to the role. We’re also open to hearing from anyone who believes their unique experiences also qualify them for consideration. If that’s you, please apply!

Compensation:

Polyarc’s salary range for this role is:

• USD: $150,000 to $175,000, with a total compensation target (cash + equity) of $187,000 to $194,500.
• CAD: $138,000 to $161,000, with a total compensation target (cash + equity) of $171,919 to $178,814.

Any final compensation is dependent on position leveling, taking into consideration the candidate’s qualifications and experiences.

Additionally, there are several other great benefits such as health care benefits (medical, dental, and vision), 401K, flexible PTO (25 accrued PTO days/yr), two seasonal holidays (5 days each) + 10 additional paid holidays, long term disability insurance, life & AD&D, and other voluntary benefits such as pet insurance.

About Us:

Polyarc was founded in 2015 to seize the unmistakable opportunity to make an impact on the future of games and the way they are made. Debuting our first game, Moss, in 2018, we discovered new compelling ways to connect players to characters through virtual reality. We are committed to pushing the boundaries of gameplay and dedicated to building a studio where we develop games and characters that players love, fostering creative and professional growth.

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As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for one another, our players, and our communities. Diversity provides a variety of perspectives, challenges us collaboratively, and adds to our creative process, positively shaping our company culture and encouraging innovation that emphasizes player value.