Sharkmob London is seeking a junior gameplay animator to join our growing in-house team, breathing life into a new game world, filled with exciting characters and creatures.

As a gameplay animator, your fascination to create playable animation content, paired with a strong passion for video games and interactive media will mix with a multi disciplined development team consisting of game designers, engineers, art disciplines and production coordinators to create a fun and highly engaging gaming experience.

Your passion in creating quality, responsive gameplay animation will enable you to work directly within our gameplay teams. You’re excited and inspired by the challenges of making video games and you’re not afraid to face problems head on, collaborate and communicate with leads, seniors and other disciplines to bring your characters to life in game.

You are a good communicator, not afraid to speak up, step up and be part of a core development team tasked with building the next generation of games.

This role is a hybrid work position, with three set days on site in our Central London studio and two days work-from-home.

Responsibilities

• In this role, you will create animation for in-game assets and participate in making gameplay features and protypes to help design realize the game’s vision.
• Collaborate with designers, engineers and artists to ensure animation assets meet gameplay and technical requirements.
• Work with the lead animator and senior animators to break down tasks, plan and follow process and style guides.
• Participate in team activities, stand-ups, critiques and game reviews.

Requirements

• Provide a demo reel, showing you’re skilled in the fundamentals of animation, with emphasis on solid appeal in posing, controlled use of weight, forces, body mechanics and a strong sense of timing and rhythm.
• Keen interest in games, gaming and interactive, non-linear animation
• Understanding of game development techniques for animation, use real time engines and differences/challenges that sets game animation apart from cinematics.
• Good communication skills and strong desire to work within multi disciplined teams.
• Natural motivation to make games.

Bonus points

• Some production experience or a released game title
• Skills in other disciplines such as modelling, rigging, vfx, technical art or scripting
• Real-time animation examples and game engine experience

Portfolio Requirements (Please read carefully)

• Resume and portfolio reel demonstrating fundamentals of animation with gameplay animation examples. Preferably running in a game engine such as Unreal Engine.
• Your reel is mainly focused and tailored to showcase gameplay animation, in-game cycles and body mechanics on biped, quadruped or creatures. No cinematic acting shots please! (reels lacking gameplay animation examples will be rejected)
• Showing hand keyed animation examples is a must, motion capture editing examples a bonus
• Short description of the work on show and your exact role in its development

Animation Test

As this role is for a long term position within the core development team, it’s possible a short keyframe animation and motion editing test will be required to complete, in order to assess candidate’s potential suitability.

Unfortunately, no visa sponsorship is available for this role so we require someone with the right to work in the UK

Sharkmob London is a brand-new AAA studio in the heart of London, with aspirations to build one of the largest and most creatively ambitious development teams in the world. Just like the original Sharkmob studio in Malmö, Sharkmob London was founded by a team of industry veterans. As a part of Tencent Games we have the experience, backing, and ambition to build the games of the future!

At Sharkmob, we are committed to building an inclusive team that represents diverse backgrounds, perspectives and skillsets – because we believe that helps us create great games. We welcome all candidates that are aligned with our core values of shared ownership, smart decisions and last but not least – having fun!

Remuneration and benefits

• Competitive salaries based on up-to-date data from external benchmarking providers & reviewed annually.
• 30 days annual leave, in addition to all UK Bank Holidays.
• Hybrid work-from-home policy.
• Discretionary annual performance-based bonus.
• Private pension (10% total, up to 5% individual contribution matched by Sharkmob).
• BUPA private Healthcare, Cigna dental cover, life insurance scheme and income protection policy.
• £425 yearly preventative healthcare allowance.
• Core studio hours 10:00-16:00 with 1 'wellness hour' to be used per week.
• Daily breakfasts, snacks & refreshments at the studio.