Animator Jobs
What does a Animator do?
An Animator brings static assets to life by designing and implementing movement for characters, creatures, props, and cameras across 2D and 3D pipelines. Day-to-day work involves keyframing and refining motion in tools like Maya, Blender, or Unreal Engine, collaborating with art directors, riggers, and game designers to ensure animations feel believable and serve the project's tone. Depending on specialization, they may focus on character performance and facial animation, technical systems like state machines and blend trees, or real-time gameplay locomotion and combat. They review their own work against reference footage, iterate based on feedback, and deliver polished assets that meet technical constraints such as polygon budgets and frame-rate targets.
Key responsibilities
- Keyframe and polish character, creature, and prop animations to brief
- Build and maintain animation state machines and blend trees in game engines
- Collaborate with riggers to identify and resolve rig limitations
- Review animation against live-action or motion-capture reference
- Implement animations in-engine and troubleshoot playback issues
- Iterate on work based on art direction and gameplay feedback
Skills & tools
How to become a Animator
Education & background
Portfolio-driven; a degree in animation, fine art, or game design is common but not universally required.
Career path
Junior Animator → Animator → Senior Animator → Lead Animator → Animation Director, or lateral specialization into Technical Animator or Character Animator.
Salary
20% of Animator postings are remote. Remote Animator jobs →
Animator jobs
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Animator jobs: common questions
What type of job is an animator?
An Animator brings static assets to life by designing and implementing movement for characters, creatures, props, and cameras across 2D and 3D pipelines. Day-to-day work involves keyframing and refining motion in tools like Maya, Blender, or Unreal Engine, collaborating with art directors, riggers, and game designers to ensure animations feel believable and serve the project's tone. Depending on specialization, they may focus on character performance and facial animation, technical systems like state machines and blend trees, or real-time gameplay locomotion and combat. They review their own work against reference footage, iterate based on feedback, and deliver polished assets that meet technical constraints such as polygon budgets and frame-rate targets.
How do I get a job as an animator?
Portfolio-driven; a degree in animation, fine art, or game design is common but not universally required. Junior Animator → Animator → Senior Animator → Lead Animator → Animation Director, or lateral specialization into Technical Animator or Character Animator.
Do animators get paid well?
Across 22 Animator postings on our board that disclose pay, the median is $108K USD per year, with the middle half between $73K and $128K.
Related & nearby
Tools Animators use
All tools →