We are looking for a talented Animator to join the Apex Legends Mobile team for a remote contract position. You will help to establish and realize an immersive experience through remarkable animations and gameplay.
What you’ll do…
Create high-quality, believable animation content for APEX that both looks and feels amazing!
Work closely with our Senior Animators to reinforce both the personality and fantasy of our Legends.
Own the content that you’re responsible for, from conceptualization (blocking, prototype mocap shoots) through to realization (polished key-framing/motion editing, implementation in the game)
Maintain communication with the Lead Artist and the production team, throughout the development of your areas of responsibility.
Contribute towards improving the animation pipeline.
Be proactive in assessing and evolving the experience of playing APEX
Ideally, you will have…
1+ years of professional game development experience
Experience with locomotion-based anim sets and idle behaviors that truly encapsulate the character's personality and fantasy.
Experience creating character animations together with camera behavior that compliments the beats/action.
A solid level of proficiency with Maya (and ideally Motion Builder)
A solid understanding of motion editing (re-posting, re-timing, and pulsing mocap data)
Proactive work ethic and will take pride and responsibility for the continued success of Apex Legends
What’s it like to be an Animator at Respawn?
Feel: Our studio puts a big emphasis on fun gameplay. We want responsive, immersive gameplay that just feels right. Our animators contribute directly to this effort through their high-quality, believable animations. They work closely with game designers to help make gameplay aspects such as combat, and traversal look and FEEL amazing.
Inspiration: Our animators inspire the rest of the team and each other. We have regular show-and-tells and seeing animators take things to the next level with their great work energizes everyone. The animation team is constantly working to evolve our animations to raise the industry bar.
Resources: We have our own mocap stage and Xsens suits for quick prototypes. Our animation team members are directly involved in seeing their vision through on the stage. Our animators can throw on the suit themselves and act out their ideas, or they can work with actors to get the data they need.
Values: Our animation teams are aligned on their values. They share their inspiration, knowledge, and passion with the others in their department. They aspire to treat everything they work on as a personal masterpiece. They play the game and are encouraged to speak up if they see anything that is not up to our high standards. They put their time and passion into what will have the biggest payoff for players. Our leads also make a lot of effort to ensure that the animators work on assignments they are excited about.
Ownership: Our teams are small and everyone has a lot of ownership over their work. While reporting to our Lead Artist, our animators take their work from conceptualization to shipping. As part of a small team, you will have the opportunity to shine here.
What do we look for in Animator candidates?
Hand Keyed Animations:
We look for accomplished key frame animators. Although we do use mocap as a powerful tool, our animators will often hand key their work from scratch or use key-frames to improve or add their own personal flair to mocap data.
Realism/Believability:
Our work tends to be realistic as opposed to highly stylized. We love seeing realistic, key-framed human motion in reels. That’s the best way for us to understand how well you could deliver similar work here. If your reel contains mainly stylized animations, we look for the same signs of quality such as believability, polish, and impressive acting.
Passion:
We look for animators who are highly passionate. Our animation team is constantly sharing inspiration and working to raise the quality bar. No one is phoning it in here – our team loves what they do and it shows in their work.
Potential Over Experience:
We value talent over years of experience. Experience counts, but the potential is important too. We look for motivated developers with a keen eye for quality.
Team player:
Positivity and great attitude help to fuel greatness. The ability to accept feedback and critiques will help you tailor your work towards what’s best for the game. Making games is a group effort and you will work closely with other departments such as design, vfx, audio, engineering, and art. Teamwork is very important to our success.
About EA We exist to inspire the world to play. Through innovative technology and immersive storytelling, we deliver new ways of experiencing worlds of interactive entertainment for our millions of players worldwide. Our strength lies in the diversity of our people, combining creativity, innovation and passion. We fully champion inclusive culture, and provide opportunities for growing, learning, and leading that allows for the most impactful and rewarding work of our teams’ careers. We put our people first, and we make sure they’re taken care of both in and out of the office. As we reflect on our learnings and successes from remote work, we aim to provide dynamic, collaborative and flexible work environments for our teams. Our employees connect through our Employee Resource Groups, which are actively involved in driving business decisions every step of the way. But our support doesn’t end at the workplace—we also encourage a balanced lifestyle with paid time off and new parent leave, free video games, fitness reimbursement and more. Our goal is to provide a safe, respectful and inspiring workplace for all of our employees. Through our diversity, equity, inclusion and social responsibility programs, we’re doing the work to give everyone the space to be their full selves while giving back to our community. We’re looking for problem-solvers, game-changers, innovators, dreamers, doers—people that are ready to move the needle and build on our success. As our industry accelerates, we aren’t just keeping up—we’re staying ahead of the game. Electronic Arts is an equal opportunity employer. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, religion, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Electronic Arts also makes workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law.
