Lead Artist / Character Animator

The core of the role

We expect approximately 70–80% of the role to be hands-on artistic and animation production, with the remainder covering reviews, visual development, documentation, team discussions and helping maintain quality and consistency.

Your principal responsibilities will include:

• ✦3D character modelling and sculpting
• ✦Character animation
• ✦Creating locomotion, combat, traversal, reaction and character-performance animations
• ✦Working with character rigs and preparing characters for animation
• ✦Integrating and refining character animation within Unreal Engine
• ✦3D environment and prop modelling
• ✦Texturing
• ✦Material creation and optimisation
• ✦Creating high-quality, game-ready assets
• ✦Bringing assets into Unreal Engine and setting them up correctly
• ✦Unreal materials and material instances
• ✦Scene assembly and visual presentation
• ✦Lighting
• ✦LODs, collision and asset optimisation
• ✦Preparing characters, environments and props for production
• ✦Helping establish and maintain visual standards
• ✦Reviewing visual work and animation produced by other contributors
• ✦Working directly with the Creative Director on characters, environments, creatures, levels, animation and the wider visual identity of the game

Depending on your strengths, you may also contribute to concept art, paintovers, visual development, environment composition, pipeline design, style guides, production documentation and review of outsourced or freelance artwork.

We do not expect every applicant to be equally strong in every discipline.

What matters is having excellent core artistic skills, strong character-animation ability and the technical confidence to turn those things into a functioning game inside Unreal.

Unreal Engine expertise is essential

This is particularly important to us.

You must be able to work confidently and independently in Unreal Engine as part of a real game-production pipeline.

We are looking for someone comfortable with areas including:

• ✦Asset import and setup
• ✦Character and skeletal-assets setup
• ✦Importing, testing and refining animation
• ✦Unreal character-animation workflows
• ✦Animation state and gameplay integration
• ✦Materials and shaders
• ✦Lighting
• ✦Scene assembly
• ✦LODs and optimisation
• ✦Collision and production-ready asset preparation
• ✦Troubleshooting visual, animation and technical asset issues
• ✦Working collaboratively with developers inside an Unreal project

Experience with systems such as Animation, Control Rig, Sequencer and related Unreal animation tools would be particularly valuable.

You do not need to be a programmer, but you should understand how characters, environments, artwork and animation actually function inside the engine, rather than treating Unreal as simply the final step in an export process.

Character animation

Animation is an important part of this role.

We are looking for someone who understands not simply how to make a character move, but how to give a character personality, weight, timing and readable gameplay performance.

The game contains a varied cast of heroes, creatures, enemies and unusual characters, so the work may include:

• ✦Walk, run, jump and traversal cycles
• ✦Combat animations
• ✦Attacks, dodges and reactions
• ✦Creature and enemy movement
• ✦Characterful idle animations
• ✦Environmental interactions
• ✦Transformation sequences
• ✦Cinematic or narrative moments
• ✦Exaggerated and stylised animation where appropriate
• ✦Iterating animation in-engine to make it feel right during actual gameplay

Strong animation fundamentals matter more to us than allegiance to a particular animation package.

Who we're looking for

We care far more about talent, speed, judgement, technical ability and what you can actually produce than how many years you have worked in the industry.

If you are a highly capable artist and animator, work quickly without sacrificing quality, solve problems intelligently and can use Unreal Engine expertly, that matters more to us than whether you have five years of professional experience or fifteen.

We are deliberately not recruiting by years served.

A brilliant artist or animator who can demonstrate the standard, speed and technical ability we need is more interesting to us than somebody with a very long CV but a less convincing body of work.

Your portfolio or showreel should ideally demonstrate strength in several of the following:

• ✦Character modelling
• ✦Character animation
• ✦Creature animation
• ✦Environment modelling
• ✦Sculpting and high/low-poly workflows
• ✦Texturing and materials
• ✦Stylised 3D art
• ✦Game-ready asset creation
• ✦Lighting and presentation
• ✦Composition and visual storytelling
• ✦Unreal Engine production

Experience on a shipped PC or console title is highly desirable, but it is not essential if your portfolio, animation reel, technical ability and speed demonstrate that you can work at the level we need.

Tools and pipeline

We primarily use Blender, but we are not prescriptive about software.

If your preferred workflow uses Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Procreate or other professional tools, that is absolutely fine.

The same applies to animation software.

What matters is the quality of your work and your ability to bring that work successfully into Unreal Engine.

AI-assisted creative development

We use AI-assisted tools selectively for ideation, reference development and rapid visual exploration.

Final production artwork and animation must be created, directed and refined by professional artists, with clear asset provenance and an appropriate production workflow.

AI is a supporting tool, not a substitute for artistic or animation skill.

About the project

This is not an early-stage idea looking for somebody to turn it into a game.

The project is already in active development, with an Unreal demo/prototype underway and a substantial body of character designs, environments, level designs, visual development and game-design material already established.

You will therefore be joining at an interesting point: there is a clear creative foundation, but substantial opportunity remains to influence how that vision becomes a finished game.

The project is an original, story-driven action-adventure with a distinctive stylised visual identity and a strong emphasis on memorable characters, imaginative environments, expressive animation and unusual gameplay.

Further details and visual material will be shared with appropriate applicants.

How we work

We are a small, family-sized independent development team.

The atmosphere is collaborative, informal and ambitious.

You will work closely with the project's creator and Creative Director, who retains overall creative direction.

The Lead Artist / Character Animator will act as custodian of the project's visual identity in collaboration with the Creative Director, helping translate that direction into consistent, production-ready artwork and animation.

We want somebody who is comfortable contributing ideas, suggesting better solutions and constructively challenging an approach where appropriate — not simply executing instructions.

At the same time, being able to interpret direction, respond positively to feedback and iterate quickly is important.

The project is fully remote, but applicants must be based in the UK.

You should be comfortable working independently and presenting your progress to the team.

We expect a weekly Microsoft Teams review, at a mutually workable time, where work is presented, discussed and agreed for the following stage.

Why join the project?

For the right artist and animator, this is an opportunity to make a significant creative contribution to the visual development of an original game project while remaining heavily involved in actually creating it.

You will be joining while much of the game's visual world, characters and movement language are still being built.

That means the successful artist will have the opportunity to leave a strong creative mark on its characters, animation, environments, creatures, materials, lighting and wider visual language.

Rather than working on one narrow category of assets within a very large production, you will be able to see and influence the wider visual development of the game.

We are looking for someone who finds that prospect exciting.

Contract and availability

The role will initially be offered on a freelance / contractor basis.

We are open to:

• ✦Part-time ongoing involvement
• ✦Increasing towards full-time involvement as development progresses
• ✦Milestone-based engagements
• ✦Agreed project or asset-based fees where appropriate

The initial engagement will be agreed around a defined phase of development or set of milestones, with a genuine intention to build a long-term working relationship if the collaboration works well for everyone.

Compensation will be competitive and dependent on ability, experience and the form of engagement.

We are happy to discuss the expected rate range before asking candidates to enter a formal interview process.

Start: Immediate / October 2026.