Ivy Road is looking for a 3D Animator to work on a bunch of keyframe character animation for our unannounced game!

Hi! This is Aura (she/her), I’m basically the animation lead/rigger/animation tech person at Ivy Road. I figured I’d write most of this personally, since this role will be working directly with me.

We’re looking for someone who can bring lots of character to our game’s cast of NPCs. You’ll be making short reusable animations for our writers to script into conversations, bespoke stuff for fleshing out cutscenes, basic animations for incidental characters, the like. You’ll mostly be working on conversation-adjacent character acting (no lip sync tho!), so ideally that’s a thing you’re interested in doing a lot of. This is all keyframe, no mocap.

Basic responsibilities are that you’ll be making and submitting animations to me for notes/implementation, as well as sending any requests for rig modifications my way. Beyond that, this role is a sort of “bring the amount of self-guidedness you want” - you’ll be getting some degree of guidance either way, but if you’re the sort of person who likes to come up with animation ideas from reading a script instead of an asset list, I’m more than happy to make room for that.

The style of the game is a sort of restrainedly toony movement on high-detail characters - we need to support a narrative mix of humor and complete sincerity, so finding that balance is important. That said, we’re not really asking for super elaborate and humanistic animation. What we’re looking for more than anything is someone who can bring out the personality of a wildly differing cast of characters in small and memorable ways, without leaning too hard on genericizing animation cliches.‍

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Pluses:

• If you have an interest in or experience with cutscene-adjacent stuff (Pacing, camera work, getting things technically set up in UE4 Sequencer) there are lot of potential things you could get your hands into. This is NOT a requirement at all, though.
• In general, knowledge of UE4 is a minor plus.‍

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Technical reqs:

• As a baseline, you should be familiar with animating and basic plugin installation in Maya.
• Familiarity with or a desire to learn how to use Perforce version control (honestly it’s not that hard)

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This is a remote contract role for a minimum duration of 6 months.

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How to Apply:

To apply - please introduce yourself and send your resume/portfolio to admin@ivyroad.fun!

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About Us:

Ivy Road is a new independent game development studio run by Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide), Karla Zimonja (Gone Home, Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den), and C418 (Minecraft), and supported by Annapurna Interactive.