Are you a Senior Cinematic Animator with AAA experience, passionate about storytelling, performance, and bringing emotional characters to life?
We’re hiring a Senior Cinematic Animator to join a leading AAA studio working on a high-profile action RPG project. This is a contract opportunity for an experienced animator who thrives on crafting cinematic storytelling through facial and body performance, from previs to final polish.
About the role
As Senior Cinematic Animator, you will collaborate closely with the cinematics team to produce high-quality cutscenes and bespoke narrative content. You will help drive the creative vision across cinematic sequences, ensuring emotional authenticity, technical excellence, and seamless in-engine integration.
This role requires deep expertise in motion capture workflows, hand-keyed animation, and in-engine cinematic implementation within a proprietary game engine.
What you’ll do:
Cinematic animation and performance
- Capture, solve, retarget, and polish facial and full-body motion capture data
- Deliver believable, high-quality character performances for narrative cutscenes
- Refine animation timing, pacing, and camera layout to enhance storytelling impact
- Iterate rapidly based on creative and director feedback
Technical implementation
- Implement cinematics directly into the game engine
- Ensure smooth integration between cinematic sequences and gameplay
- Collaborate with technical teams to resolve animation and performance challenges
Creative collaboration
- Work closely with the Lead, Director, and Cinematics team to align with overall vision
- Contribute to narrative-driven animation decisions
- Support continuous improvement in cinematic quality standards
What we’re looking for:
Experience
- 5+ years of professional animation experience
- Credits on at least two shipped titles, ideally AAA
- Strong portfolio demonstrating realistic facial and full-body animation
- Proven experience with motion capture clean-up and performance refinement
Technical skills
- Proficiency in body, facial, and camera animation
- Experience with industry-standard animation software
- Understanding of in-engine cinematic workflows
- Experience with proprietary engines or AAA production pipelines preferred
Creative strengths
- Strong understanding of emotional storytelling through animation
- Eye for performance nuance and cinematic composition
- Passion for narrative-driven game development
Nice to have
- Experience in cinematography or editing
- Experience implementing cinematics directly in a game engine
- Background in large-scale RPG or narrative-driven titles
Why join:
- Contribute to a high-profile AAA action RPG project
- Work with a talented and collaborative cinematic team
- Hybrid work model with modern studio facilities
- Opportunity to help shape world-class narrative experiences
The studio is committed to equal opportunity employment and fostering an inclusive environment where creativity and collaboration thrive.
If you’re a senior cinematic animator who excels at delivering emotionally powerful performances and seamless in-engine storytelling, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now, or email Joe McKernan - jm@skillsearch.com
Years of experience and salary levels are shown purely as a guide. We will only consider applications from candidates that can demonstrate the skills or experience required for the role.
Please be aware that while we would love to respond to every application we receive, due to high numbers we cannot guarantee this. We do however appreciate any time you invest into the application and will make sure to get in touch should anything in future more closely fit your skillset.
