Job Description

Mysteria Studio is seeking an experienced Character Rigger & Animator for a freelance position. You will play a key role in bringing our PC Action RPG Asterfel to life, giving our hero, enemies, and monstrosities the movement and game feel that make them believable in combat and exploration. Both your artistic and technical skills will be of great importance to achieve this!
We offer a fully remote work arrangement with flexible working hours.

Responsibilities:
• Create high-quality character animations, including natural humanoid and monster movement
• Create and integrate gameplay animations that achieve smooth game feel for player and enemy movement, combat, and interactions
• Rework and improve existing animations to meet quality standards
• Rig and skin characters using a mix of autoriggers and hand-painted skin weights
• Establish efficient workflows to optimize the animation pipeline
• Maintain a working understanding of animation implementation in Unreal Engine
• Work with our lead artist and character art team to ensure consistency between vision and the final in-game animations
• Work independently to deliver rigs and animations based on these references
• Check rigs and animations in Unreal Engine 5 to make sure they fit our gameplay

Requirements:
• Experience working on at least one commercially shipped game as a character animator and/or rigger
• A minimum of 3 years of experience in animation and/or rigging roles within the video game industry
• Strong portfolio demonstrating both humanoid and creature animation (locomotion, combat)
• Proficient in 3D rigging and skinning workflows (Maya or 3ds Max), including hand-painted skin weights
• Experience with autorigging tools and the ability to clean up and customize their output
• Solid understanding of animation principles applied to gameplay (anticipation, weight, timing, follow-through)
• Ability to work in a self-organized manner within a team, while being respectful and an attentive listener
• Minimum availability of 3 hours per work day to work on your assigned tasks
• Comfortable with working in a 100% remote working team
• Strong Bonus: Experience implementing animations in Unreal Engine 4 or 5 (Animation Blueprints, state machines, blend spaces, Montages)
• Bonus: experience with Control Rig and/or MetaHuman rigs in Unreal Engine
• Bonus: scripting experience (Python or MEL) for tooling and pipeline support

Application Process:
Please send the following information to jobs@mysteriastudio.com :
• A link to your online portfolio and / or examples of your past work in video form
• Your hourly pay rate
• Optionally, a few words about projects you’ve worked on, medieval fantasy things you like etc. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have about the job
The first step for select candidates is to go through an onboarding process before they can join the team. This is done via a Google Meet call. We know that your time is valuable, and try to keep these as brief as possible.
The second step is to sign a freelance contract and complete an application task, which is paid at your regular pay rate.
We’re looking forward to your applications!