Lead Animator Full Time

nDreams Studio Elevation is re-establishing the boundaries of VR. We’re looking for an exceptionally talented Lead Animator to help us explore, create, and deliver world-leading innovation in software and VR hardware. With our first title nearing release and a second in early planning stages, it’s a great time to join our fully remote, VR-first studio.

As a Lead Animator, you will design, create, and refine animations for characters, creatures, vehicles, and environments, ensuring they meet the artistic vision and technical requirements of the game. You will be accountable for a broad area of animation, and for the organisation and direction of the animation team.

The rundown:

• Permanent role
• Full time (37.5 hours per week)
• Fully remote within the UK
• Salary is competitive and dependent on experience

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the animation team to create high-quality animations for VR games.
• Collaborate with designers, artists, and programmers to ensure animations integrate seamlessly into the game.
• Develop and maintain animation pipelines and tools, ensuring efficiency and scalability.
• Mentor and provide feedback to junior animators.
• Work closely with the Art director to achieve the artistic vision of the project.
• Ensure animations meet technical requirements and performance standards.
• Stay updated with the latest animation techniques and technologies.
• Implement animations within Unreal Engine.
• Conduct regular reviews of animation work, providing constructive feedback to the team.
• Define motion planning and the implementation process of various characters and their respective responsiveness.

Requirements

The skills you’ll need:

• An accomplished Lead animator with proven experience in producing AAA content for games.
• Strong understanding of animation principles and techniques.
• The ability to understand game genres and art styles and create animations that suit those worlds.
• Expert in animation software such as Maya, Blender, or equivalent.
• Experience with motion capture and rigging.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a remote team environment.
• Knowledge of game development pipelines, including asset management and version control systems.
• Strong analytical skills to solve technical and creative challenges in animation.

The nice to haves:

• Experience with VR animation.
• Passion for VR and innovative technologies.

Benefits

We are nDreams – we develop and publish the world’s most immersive VR games. You may know us as the team behind Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Synapse, Phantom: Covert Ops, Fracked, and the recently released FRENZIES. With humble beginnings as an independent studio, we combine amazing projects and considerable scale with a personal, caring touch.

We believe the best workplaces and games are created by diverse, happy and safe teams. We’re committed to building a culture centred on respect, wellbeing and balance. It’s crucial we make our games and industry more accessible to underrepresented communities. We strive to live this through the people we hire, the experiences we create and the causes we support.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to bring their best, authentic self to work. Please let us know if you require reasonable adjustments during the interview process by emailing interviewing@ndreams.com or speaking to your nDreams recruiter. For more information about reasonable adjustments, check out this guidance from Scope.

We offer great perks, including flexible hours, duvets days, your birthday off, dedicated personal development time and support, as well as regular socials. Beyond this, there’s an excellent holiday offering, pension scheme, health insurance, life cover and much more.

We are a virtual reality games publisher and developer based in Farnborough, UK. Since 2013 we’ve been focused entirely on virtual reality. As one of the lucky few to get our hands-on Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR prototypes, we were among the first to step into this immersive new medium. We haven’t looked back since.

Combining innovation with excellence, the culmination of our work so far is the #1 selling, Best of E3 Award-winning, Phantom: Covert Ops. We’ve got several exciting projects planned for 2021 and beyond, including Fracked, our recently announced PS VR exclusive. We can’t wait to show you more…