Animator 3D Job Overview
| Role Title | Lead Animator 3D (Stylized Games | Unity3D) |
| Company Name | High-Profile Co-Development Studio (Confidential Hiring) |
| Department | 3D Art Department |
| Location | Poznań, Poland, Europe (Fully Remote / Async Allowed) |
| Job Type | Full-Time |
| Contract Options | Flexible (B2B Contract or Standard Labor Employment) |
| Experience Level | Senior / Lead (5+ Years of Professional Experience) |
| Primary Software | Autodesk Maya, Unity3D Engine |
| Target Scale | AA and AAA Stylized Game Projects |
| Estimated Salary Range | €55,000 – €75,000 / year (B2B Remote) | 160,000 – 220,000 PLN / year (Local Poland Contract) Based on experience and regional tax structures. |
Position Overview for Animator 3D
Beffio studio is looking for a highly skilled, production-tested Lead Animator 3D who seamlessly combines elite artistic sensibilities with hands-on technical game engine implementation. In this senior role, you will lead the charge in delivering expressive, gameplay-driven character animation for high-profile AA and AAA stylized game projects developed within the Unity3D engine.
This is a unique hands-on leadership role embedded within a highly collaborative, fully remote studio environment. It is tailored specifically for a veteran animator who thrives on creative ownership, continues to find joy in direct production execution, and excels at interfacing directly with client-side leadership.
As the Lead Animator 3D, you will be the primary animation point of contact for our studio, working hand-in-hand with our client’s Principal Animator to preserve visual intent, maintain absolute stylistic consistency, and solve complex technical real-time animation challenges.
Comprehensive Role Responsibilities
Your day-to-day responsibilities span cross-studio (beffio studio) leadership, high-level client collaboration, pure keyframe asset creation, and technical implementation inside the engine. Remote jobs.
1. Client Collaboration & Vision Alignment
- Primary Representation: Act as the main animation point of contact and representative for our studio’s art team, participating in high-level reviews and alignment syncs.
- Pipeline Synchronization: Collaborate directly with the client’s Principal Animator, absorbing their stylistic direction, understanding their established animation rig mechanics, and ensuring our team’s output mirrors their artistic vision perfectly.
- Feedback Translation: Take raw, high-level feedback or draw-overs from client leadership and translate those notes into actionable, highly polished, production-ready iterations.
2. High-Performance Stylized Animation
- Expressive Character Crafting: Design and animate distinct, highly expressive character movements, combat sequences, locomotion sets, and cinematic behaviors using traditional keyframe techniques.
- Gameplay Readability: Prioritize strong posing, extreme exaggeration, crisp silhouettes, and flawless timing to guarantee that animations read perfectly from gameplay camera distances.
- Responsive Gameplay Support: Craft responsive animation states that actively support tight player controls, immediate hit-stop feedback, and clear enemy tell-signs (telegraphing attacks).
- Stylized Technique Development: Experiment with and implement specialized stylized animation aesthetics, including stepped/reduced frame rate techniques (animating on “twos” or “threes”) and creative spacing solutions to evoke an animated feature-film quality.
3. Unity3D Implementation & Systems Logic
- State Machine Architecture: Take full ownership of implementing your animations directly into the Unity3D editor. Build, organize, and optimize complex Animator Controllers, multi-layered blend trees, and intricate state machines.
- In-Engine Iteration: Test and iterate on real-time animation behavior inside active Unity test scenes to match precise frame data, gameplay windows, and designer layout specifications.
- Transition Polish: Write, tweak, and polish custom state transition curves and parameter thresholds to secure ultra-responsive, seamless blending between animations under variable player inputs.
4. Quality Assurance & Mentorship
- Style Guide Stewardship: Establish and maintain overall animation quality, fluid mechanics, and stylistic consistency across the entire project pipeline.
- Hands-on Production: Lead by example. Keep your hands dirty in day-to-day asset creation, personally delivering core character benchmarks and milestone animations.
- Peer Guidance: Offer constructive feedback, structural support, and pipeline guidance to mid-level or junior animators on the team, helping them troubleshoot technical rigging or animation hitches.
5. Performance Optimization & Cross-Discipline Collaboration
- Platform Awareness: Adapt animation curves, keyframes, and bone counts to fit real-time runtime budgets and memory constraints, particularly when targeting mobile or hybrid hardware.
- Asset Optimization: Prune and optimize keyframe data within Unity to minimize performance overhead, layout footprints, and excessive memory usage without sacrificing visual fluidity.
- Cross-Discipline Alignment: Work daily alongside character concept artists, technical riggers, gameplay programmers, and level designers to identify production bottlenecks and streamline the journey from a model mesh to an active in-game character.
Candidate Requirements & Qualifications for Animator 3D
Required Technical Experience
- Professional Longevity: A minimum of 5+ years of verified professional experience actively working as a dedicated character animator within the video game industry.
- Leadership Background: Proven track record operating in a Senior or Lead Animator capacity on at least one shipped or majorly produced game project.
- Production Portfolio: A world-class animation showreel demonstrating deep expertise in stylized, gameplay-ready character animation. The reel must clearly highlight your understanding of body mechanics, combat weight, distinct character acting, and real-time execution.
- Mastery of DCC Software: Advanced, comprehensive professional experience using Autodesk Maya as your primary animation toolset.
Game Design & Engine Literacy
- Unity Architecture: Deep, hands-on understanding of the Unity3D engine. You must be completely autonomous when navigating Unity’s 2D/3D systems, compiling animation controllers, and troubleshooting runtime mesh distortion or root motion issues.
- Input Dynamics: A clear comprehension of how real-time animation systems interact dynamically with backend gameplay systems, logic states, and instantaneous player controller input.
Artistic Mastery & Core Competencies
- Keyframe Expertise: An extraordinary grasp of the core 12 principles of animation, with a particular specialization in caricature, extreme posing, overlapping action, and snappy timing weight.
- Stylized Innovation: Demonstrated familiarity with modern stylized motion paths, including lower frame rate treatments, snappier anime-inspired pacing, and non-photorealistic movement styles.
Mindset, Communication & Soft Skills
- Client-Facing Confidence: Exceptional verbal and written English communication skills. You are comfortable, articulate, and professional when presenting art assets or negotiating pipeline requirements with external client directors.
- Autonomous Work ethic: A self-starting problem solver who thrives in a highly asynchronous, fully remote production landscape across European time zones.
- Egoless Collaboration: The rare ability to balance personal artistic pride and asset ownership with an openness to radical stylistic experimentation and constructive client critique. remote jobs.
Bonus Skills & Desirable Attributes
While not strictly mandatory, candidates possessing any of the following bonus skill sets will be heavily prioritized during the selection process:
- Prior experience building or animating assets specifically optimized for highly performance-constrained environments, such as mobile hardware or standalone VR headsets.
- A deep personal affinity for, or professional experience with, stylized, retro-revival, neo-noir, or pixel-inspired 3D animation aesthetics.
- Basic technical animation capabilities, including structural skeleton creation, skin-weighting adjustments, custom rig building, or writing custom script constraints in Maya/Blender.
- Direct exposure to procedural or semi-automated animation pipelines, ragdoll blend setups, or physics-driven secondary animation systems (such as Unity’s dynamic bone components).
- Prior longevity working successfully within highly distributed, multiregional, fully remote indie or AAA production teams. #Animator 3D jobs.
What We Offer
- Elite Project Portfolios: Direct involvement on premium stylized AA and AAA game titles characterized by incredibly distinct, celebrated artistic identities.
- Contract Choice & Stability: A protected, full-time career path built on a rock-solid studio structure. We accommodate your personal tax and corporate preferences by offering flexible contract layouts, including localized labor employment agreements or high-tier global B2B contracts.
- Studio Influence: A seat at the leadership table where your creative approaches to technical workflows, animation quality standards, and overall pipeline efficiency will directly steer production behavior.
- Refined Remote Culture: A highly mature, respectful, and organized remote workplace culture populated by seasoned industry veterans. We strictly prioritize production efficiency and asynchronous workflow optimization over disruptive oversight and mandatory corporate fluff.
- Competitive Compensation: A highly attractive financial package tailored to your premium skill level, regional market value, and leadership experience.
- Annual Studio Retreats: Fully covered annual team retreats designed to bring our international developers together in person, focusing on overarching studio alignment, collective technical learning, and real human team bonding.
Application Instructions
Beffio studio value your time, artistic focus, and production catalog far more than standard corporate formalities. Therefore, we do not require a formal cover letter.
To apply for this Lead position, please compile and submit the following two items:
1. direct link to your current, un-passworded animation portfolio / reel.
2. brief written breakdown (maximum 300 words) detailing one specific character animation or gameplay sequence you spearheaded that you are immensely proud of. Please explain the technical hurdles you overcame or the stylistic choices you made to bring that specific asset to life.
