Overview
Define and maintain the artistic vision for realistic human animation across all projects, establishing quality standards that guide both automated generation systems and manual refinement processes. This role ensures that technical innovation serves compelling, believable character performance.
Key Responsibilities
- Establish creative vision and quality benchmarks for realistic human animation
- Define animation style guides, quality metrics, and acceptance criteria for generated content
- Review and provide feedback on animations produced by ML systems and team members
- Collaborate with ML engineers to train their understanding of quality animation principles
- Direct character performance for key sequences and establish templates for scalable production
- Mentor character animators and provide artistic guidance throughout production
- Work with Technical Animation Lead to ensure workflows support creative goals
- Make final creative decisions on animation quality and approve assets for production use
- Stay current with industry trends in realistic character animation and performance capture
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of professional animation experience, with at least 2 years in leadership roles
- Expert understanding of human anatomy, biomechanics, and realistic movement
- Strong portfolio demonstrating realistic human character animation
- Experience with both keyframe animation and motion capture workflows
- Familiarity with animation tools in Maya, MotionBuilder, or similar DCC applications
- Understanding of Unreal Engine animation systems and real-time constraints
- Experience reviewing and providing constructive feedback on animation work
- Fluent English for clear direction, critique, and communication with international teams
Essential Soft Skills
- Team player: Builds collaborative relationships with technical teams and translates creative needs effectively
- Proactive mindset: Identifies quality issues early and establishes preventive quality measures
- Motivation to grow: Open to learning how ML systems work and guiding their development toward artistic excellence
- Clear communicator: Provides actionable, specific feedback that helps both humans and algorithms improve
- Adaptability: Comfortable working with novel generation systems that challenge traditional animation workflows
- Creative problem solver: Finds innovative ways to achieve realism within technical and scale constraints
- Office presence: On-site availability for animation reviews, team direction, and collaborative creative sessions