As a member of the Animation team, you bring champions to life through classic animation principles and body mechanics. You will create high quality animations for a diverse and rapidly growing universe, including bipeds, quadrupeds, and creatures. A great reel will showcase a variety of walk cycles, a diverse selection of game-related animation, and a strong foundation in the principles of animation, including weight, anticipation, and impact. Also working to expand our current content pipeline, you will collaborate with designers and artists to develop new features and technologies. Your craft expertise will breathe life into iconic and beloved characters for players.

As a Senior Gameplay Animator on our unpublished MMO project, you'll create the animation that defines the gameplay feel, locomotion, and creatures in our upcoming MMO. You'll craft stylized, responsive gameplay animation that brings characters and creatures to life while supporting satisfying gameplay. Working closely with designers, technical artists, engineers, and character artists, you'll own animation from ideation through implementation. You'll create memorable animation, define the feel of player locomotion, bring personality to characters in-game, and implement your work directly in the game engine. As a senior member of the team, you'll help define the visual identity of gameplay animation, contribute to animation best practices, and maintain a high quality bar across the project.
Responsibilities:

• Create high-quality gameplay animation for playable characters, creatures, and others with a focus on locomotion and creature behavior.
• Create responsive, stylized animation that delivers satisfying gameplay and memorable character performances.
• Implement, iterate, and polish gameplay animation in the game engine
• Work within state machines and gameplay systems to support responsive gameplay and reliable animation behavior.
• Partner with designers to prototype and iterate on gameplay animation, using playtesting and feedback to improve responsiveness, readability, and feel.
• Collaborate with technical artists and engineers to improve animation workflows and runtime behavior.
• Investigate and research emergent game animation technologies
• Collaborate with character artists to ensure animation supports the visual direction and personality of characters and creatures.
• Help establish animation standards and maintain a high quality bar across gameplay animation.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of professional experience creating gameplay animation for shipped games.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating responsive, stylized gameplay animation, including action character and creature animation.
• Experience creating gameplay animation for both humanoid characters and creatures.
• Experience implementing gameplay animation in game engines (i.e. Unreal, Unity, etc)
• Strong understanding of animation principles, body mechanics, timing, weight, and appealing stylized motion.
• Strong communication skills and experience collaborating with designers, engineers, technical artists, and fellow animators.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with Unreal Control Rig
• Experience maintaining and editing Animation Blueprints and animation state machines.
• Experience working with Motion Matching systems.
• Experience with gameplay animation features such as Motion Warping, runtime IK, or procedural animation.
• Experience creating cinematic or narrative animation using Unreal Sequencer or similar tools.
• Experience developing multiplayer games and/or open world games.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!
Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.