We are looking for an animator proficient with Spine to rig and animate the characters of our JRPG project in Unity 6.

This remote short-term role requires someone who can:

• Work in collaboration with the narrative designer & lead artist to iterate on creature and supporting cast designs. Style match them to the existing assets.
• Storyboard animations for creatures and characters.
• Rig and animate them in Spine & work in collaboration with the programmers and game designers implementing Spine models in-game.

It is a contract position expected to last two months with compensation of $500-650 per week and can be done part-time. Upon completion, you can request the next contract and contribute to the production of the assets you will have helped design.

If you are interested in the project but are worried about any of these details, please note that in your application: we value quality, and can negotiate over everything else.

The contract start date will be January 5th.

What project

We are building a mystical investigation game about a murder at a UK university: think social sim (like _Persona_) with a bit more action in combat and a lot less dungeon crawling (pub crawling may appear).

Our game is about stories people believe about themselves, each other, and the world around. The player lives through the academic year, navigating the all-too-rigid categories of academic subject and year, gender and archetype, declared beliefs and performative actions. Public perceptions and collective anxieties turn into physical creatures, spill into the town and haunt the streets. The player will have to stop them.

To give our characters expressive movement in dialogue and finely tuned combat animations, we are using Spine. The game takes place in a 3D environment and uses preset but varied camera angles: playable models rely on turnaround animations and tricks to sell the sense of depth. Enemies are almost all non-humanoid creatures with many moving parts, but fewer animations.

(See a brief style & gameplay document here.)

The project has completed an early production phase: we know our core mechanics and story, our UI is in a good spot, and we have strong concept art for the main characters. Now we are starting to build game assets for a presentable core loop.

Skills and requirements

Please apply by clicking the apply button and filling out the Google form.

Required:

• At least 2-5 years of experience animating with Spine (non-game uses and jam entries count).
• Links to your resume and portfolio.
• Link to a short supporting document.

Please, attach three samples of your animation work that seem particularly relevant to this project and give a short summary of why (just a couple sentences). What makes you proud of them? Why do they come to mind when thinking about this game?

(For example, a monster rig that required choreographing a lot of body parts; or a character model using different animation tracks to convey their status like health or progression.)

• Bonus 1: Experience working in Unity and integrating Spine.
• Bonus 2: Experience doing animation in games that require precise input and care for exact frames; especially fighting or platformer.