Lead Animator

Job Description

Treyarch is looking for a world-class Lead Animator to help lead and inspire our First Person Gameplay team by collaborating, mentoring, and crafting the highest quality animations that fits within Treyarch's Call of Duty style. You will also take part in pushing the boundaries of gameplay, storytelling, and technology. The ideal candidate is passionate about animation, gameplay, and has a strong understanding of animation principles, body mechanics, and experience in managing a team of animators.

A successful Lead Animator will bridge animation, engineering, and design to evaluate gameplay mechanics, potential issues with those mechanics, and deploy solutions. You must be highly organized, able to partner with production to ensure schedules and milestones are meet, have outstanding cross departmental communication skills, and be able to encourage the team to produce the highest quality of animations. While working with animation directors, you will help drive gameplay features and innovation, achieving groundbreaking AAA first-person animations. Additionally, this role would provide relevant input that would influence animation technology development, resources, and tool development.

What you'll do…
• Collaborate with Producers, Animators, Designers, Artists, and Engineers in providing expertise on gameplay features
• Develop industry leading gameplay animations for weapons, player movement, and more
• Manage a team of animators, giving constructive feedback while mentoring and growing talent
• Review first person animations assets daily to ensure that implementation is meeting our quality bar and aligned with our creative vision
• Collaborate with the Animation Director and Production to build and maintain an animation schedule that works with the overall project milestones
• Work with Animation and Game Design Leads to plan and direct an animation style in line with the gameplay feature(s)
• Drive improvements to the animation pipeline and explore a wide variety of ideas to push the Call of Duty style of animation forward
• Represents the Gameplay Animation team in all meetings
• Identify potential areas of risk and work with other groups to mitigate them

To succeed you should have…
• 8+ years of experience in the game industry
• At least 2+ titles shipped as a Lead Animator on a AAA title
• Expert first person animation skills
• Great understanding of realistic body mechanics as well as animation principles
• Expert knowledge of Maya
• Proven mentorship and interpersonal skills
• Expert knowledge of animation implementation and debugging techniques
• Self-starter and problem solver

We'd love it if you also have…
• Experienced camera animation skills
• Knowledge of weapon mechanics
• Experience in a ''realism'' style of animation
• Passionate about games and the Call of Duty franchise

We love hearing from anyone who is enthusiastic about changing the games industry. Not sure you meet all qualifications? Let us decide! Research shows that women and members of other under-represented groups tend to not apply to jobs when they think they may not meet every qualification, when, in fact, they often do! At Activision Blizzard, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and strongly encourage you to apply.

PS, we've also got some pretty amazing office perks and benefits, like 20 vacation days and 16 holidays, 10 weeks of family leave, free lunches and snacks at our office, comprehensive healthcare, and more! Check out all the details here for more information: https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gmz456-18-216-32-116-42 in your application.