Thank you for your interest in joining the development pipeline behind Patriam: Saga of Roljar. Patriam Studios is actively expanding its remote interactive production department within New Zealand. We are seeking a highly motivated, artistically precise, and technically minded Junior Creature Animator to join our team. This entry-level position is engineered specifically for an aspiring animator who wants to transition from foundational academic studies or personal portfolio creation into a commercial game production pipeline.
If you possess a deep fascination with animal mechanics, biomechanics, comparative anatomy, and the technical art workflows required to breathe lifelike movement into fantastical entities, this role offers an unprecedented opportunity to gain real industry experience and professional mentorship.
Job Overview : Junior Creature Animator
| Attribute | Details |
| Position Title | Junior Creature Animator |
| Company Name | Patriam Studios |
| Location | New Zealand (Remote / Work-from-Home) |
| Job Type | Full-Time / Entry-Level Track |
| Core Focus Area | Non-Humanoid Locomotion, Biomechanics & Performance |
| Primary Deliverables | Keyframe animation loops, combat cycles, and behavioral states |
| Key Software Toolsets | Autodesk Maya, Blender, MotionBuilder, Unreal Engine / Unity |
Job Summary
Patriam Studios is proud to announce new creative openings representing premiere new zealand jobs for entry-level digital artists. Operating entirely within a structured remote framework across New Zealand, the Junior Creature Animator will be responsible for bringing our diverse cast of mythological fauna and wildlife to life. This role centers on crafting highly believable creature performances that demonstrate an advanced understanding of physical weight, center of mass, multi-legged synchronization, and environmental interaction.
By utilizing comprehensive real-world reference gathering and advanced digital animation toolsets, you will turn static 3D meshes into terrifyingly real inhabitants of the game world. This position serves as an accelerated launchpad, pairing your raw creative talent with real-world shipping constraints, engine implementation tasks, and rigorous, studio-grade creative feedback.
Detailed Role Specification and Project Requirements
1. Core Animation Responsibilities
As a Junior Creature Animator, your day-to-day production tasks will span the entire life cycle of non-humanoid asset movement. Your primary focus will be generating gameplay-ready animations that communicate danger, mass, and primitive intelligence.
- Locomotion Set Development: Craft comprehensive movement matrices for various creature profiles. This includes seamless transitions between idle states, stalking cycles, walks, trots, sprints, turns, and sudden decelerations across irregular terrain.
- Visceral Combat Sequences: Design and execute high-impact combat animations, including aggressive charging sequences, localized attacks (bites, tail swipes, wing bludgeons), hit reactions, flinches, and dramatic death performances.
- Behavioral Identity & Idle Flavour: Infuse creatures with distinct personality profiles through subtle secondary animations, such as breathing cycles, ear twitches, snarls, defensive posturing, and environmental awareness animations.
- Technical Asset Integration: Import, test, and debug your animation assets directly within the project’s game engine, ensuring that root motion transitions, blend spaces, and frame-accurate state changes align with design parameters.
2. Technical Requirements & Engineering Competencies
Creature animation demands a heightened balance of pure artistic performance and strict technical discipline. We are looking for candidates who demonstrate baseline competency in the following technical areas:
- Digital Animation Mastery: Proficient foundational knowledge of keyframe animation within industry-standard Digital Content Creation (DCC) software—primarily Autodesk Maya or Blender.
- Comparative Biomechanics: A strong portfolio demonstrating a clear understanding of how skeletal and muscular systems function across diverse animal phyla, with specific attention to force propagation and center of gravity.
- Rigging and Weight Comprehension: A functional understanding of skeletal hierarchies, joint constraints, forward kinematics (FK), inverse kinematics (IK), and skin-weight deformation limits. You must be able to identify and communicate technical rig issues to our technical art team.
- Game Engine Implementation: Basic familiarity with engine-side animation systems (Unreal Engine’s Control Rig/Sequencer or Unity’s Mecanim architecture), including setting up basic state machines and managing collision boundaries during movement.
Working within a Remote New Zealand Framework
Remote Autonomy Built on Local Synergy:
Patriam Studios functions as a distributed network of elite developers. While we embrace a 100% remote working configuration that grants you the autonomy to build an optimized home studio environment, this position is strictly reserved for applicants currently living inside New Zealand. Maintaining a localized team layout allows us to execute unified daily stand-ups, preserve real-time feedback loops without time-zone lag, and actively inject growth and economic equity into the growing domestic New Zealand games ecosystem.
What We Provide to Our Junior Talent:
- Structured One-on-One Mentorship: You will not operate in a vacuum. You will receive structured, supportive, and direct critique from veteran animation directors who are invested in accelerating your professional development.
- Studio Pipeline Literacy: Gain practical knowledge regarding version control protocols (Git/Perforce), production tracking ecosystems (Jira/Trello), asset naming conventions, and scalable optimization methodologies.
- Market-Aligned Financial Compensation: To support your career launch, this junior position offers a competitive entry-level salary structure fully aligned with New Zealand industry standards, typically tracking between NZD $55,000 and $70,000 per annum for full-time production tracks, or equivalent competitive hourly allocations for structured contract agreements.
Application & Portfolio Submission Guidelines
To apply for the position of Junior Creature Animator, please compile and submit a comprehensive digital application packet adhering to the following structural requirements:
The Gameplay Animation Showreel: Provide a direct URL to your online portfolio (ArtStation, personal website, SyncSketch, or Vimeo). Your reel must prominently feature creature or non-human animation. We heavily favor reels that display clear physical weight, realistic timing, and animal locomotion over stylized or bipedal humanoid sequences.
Technical Breakdown Elements: Where possible, include a technical overlay of your work, showing the underlying rig, motion paths, or wireframes to illustrate your understanding of arc control, spacing, and keyframe cleanliness.
Targeted Cover Letter: Submit a concise professional letter detailing your artistic background, your specific methodologies for analyzing real-world animal references, and why you are drawn to the rugged, mythological aesthetic of Patriam: Saga of Roljar.
We look forward to reviewing your unique technical vision and welcoming a fresh creative engine into our studio framework. Help us forge the biological reality and terrifying presence of Patriam: Saga of Roljar. Apply today!
