We're in an early, blue sky phase on our next game. We're currently looking for a few senior developers to join us in making weird little prototypes to help explore what this new idea is turning into. If you're interested, please email us.
Animation Programmer
Please note that our next game is in early pre-production so this job wouldn't start until January, 2018 at the earliest. We're posting this ahead of time so if you're currently working on another project you'll have time to transition. For the right candidate we'd also be open to easing in with part-time or remote work if that helps.
This might be a good fit for you if:
- You've done significant work with animation programming in the past and you have interactive samples (or a reel) you can point to. If this is the first time you're hearing the words "covariance matrix" this may not be the job for you.
- You're interested in procedural animation as a way to empower animators, not replace them. We want to preserve the sense of life that an animator brings but with enough dynamic support that locomotion feels responsive to gameplay and encourages players to explore the beauty of movement.
- You're someone who looked at Ubisoft's Motion Matching tech and thought, "I wish someone would use this for motion that had nothing to do with combat."
- Ideally you're someone who reads Siggraph papers for fun. With a sense of what's at the bleeding edge and, even better, what WAS bleeding edge 5 years ago that we can finally do in real time. Stuff like this, or this, or this.
- The thought of spending most of your time on non-human, non-bipedal locomation systems is appealing.
- You'd like to work on a small team, roughly 5 - 15 people depending on the phase of production. You'll have a lot of responsibility and very little oversight -- hopefully you're senior enough that you find the prospect of that both exciting and scary.
- You love animation. This job is not about spending the next several years of your life getting rid of any trace of foot sliding. This job is about building elegant systems and intelligently managing priorities so we're making an experience that gets players to actually notice and appreciate our animation. Fixing glitches is part of that, but so is hiding them and drawing attention elsewhere. Your job is to find ways to create and highlight beautiful motion and ultimately to share your love of animation with players.
Lead Animator
Please note that our next game is in early pre-production so this job wouldn't start until January, 2018 at the earliest. We're posting this ahead of time so if you're currently working on another project you'll have time to transition. For the right candidate we'd also be open to easing in with part-time or remote work if that helps.
Animation is a key part of this game so you'll be coming on very early in development to help us explore fundamental questions about how our game will move and work and feel. Initially you'll be animating lots of offline previz for characters, cameras and background movement to flesh out a direction and ultimately establish a target look. You'll also be collaborating with our animation programmer to design and test out the custom animation tools and runtime we're building for this game.
This might be a good fit for you if:
- You're interested in how animals move. Hopefully you've got a reel with at least a few non-human characters, ideally some with wings.
- You're interested in movement of all kinds, not just traditional characters. Fantasia is one of our key references so expect to animate some unusual things. Like an egret landing on a powerline, or a psychedelic explosion of jellyfish, or a ballet performed by eclairs. You don't need to be good at animating all these things, but you should have an interest in exploring beautiful motion wherever you can find it. We'll probably rely on a technical animator to handle the shipping version of dancing eclairs etc, but when we're all wondering what makes a bow or a leap feel like ballet, you're the one we'll be looking to for an answer (and some previz).
- You're experienced enough with game animation to be able to clearly articulate what's important to you in an animation pipeline and can work with our programmers to help build it.
- You're technical enough that you know (or want to learn) basic rigging and VFX animation. We wouldn't expect you to make shipping rigs or anything, but the more self-sufficient you are the more empowered you'll be to create your own strange and incredible prototypes that the rest of us could never have imagined.
