3D Game Animator

Project

A VR game built in Unity for standalone headsets. Real-time character and weapon animation built under strict performance limits.

Role

Animate the characters and the weapons. You rig what you animate, you export it, and you hook it up in Unity yourself. You own your assets from brief to in-game, working autonomously.

Responsibilities

• Animate characters: idles, locomotion cycles, combat, reactions.
• Animate weapons and props: fire, reload, equip / holster, moving parts, attachment to hands and sockets.
• Rig and skin your own characters and weapons in Blender — joint placement, weighting, animation controls.
• Build and maintain Animator state machines — states, transitions, parameters, blend trees, layers, avatar masks.
• Set up avatars, retargeting, and root motion.
• Export FBX from Blender and integrate in Unity; diagnose and fix import issues yourself.
• Keep bone counts, clip lengths, and rig complexity inside the project’s performance budget.
• Deliver clean, named, reusable animation assets the rest of the team can pick up.
• Work with 3D, Design, and Dev on animation hookup and game feel.

Required

• Hand-keyed animation — character and weapon animation of a quality we can ship. Clean timing, weight, arcs, and silhouette.
• Rigging and skinning in Blender — you build your own rigs and paint your own weights, ready for game use.
• Unity Animator — state machines, transitions, parameters, blend trees, layers. You wire it up, not someone else.
• Autonomous — you take a brief, make your own calls, unblock yourself, and deliver without close supervision.
• FBX pipeline Blender → Unity — scale, axis, normals, avatar setup, import settings.
• Comfortable working in a current Unity 6 project.
• Mid-level minimum — at least one full production cycle of animation work behind you.
• A portfolio or reel showing animation and rigs you made yourself.
• English, written and spoken.

Nice to have

• Shipped VR or mobile title.
• VR-specific animation — first-person arms, hand poses, IK-driven avatars.
• Unity Animation Rigging package and runtime IK setups.
• C# scripting for animation hookup and animation events.
• Facial rigging and blendshapes.
• Rig tooling / Python scripting in Blender.
• Motion capture cleanup.

Hiring process

1. Portfolio / reel review.
2. Take-home technical test (approx. 4 h) — rig, skin, and animate a supplied character, then set it up in a Unity state machine.
3. Live follow-up — you walk us through your rig and your setup.

How to apply

Send your resume, portfolio, and a short note on why you're the right fit to talent@jmancurly.com. We want to see your best work. And we move fast.