Technical Animator

About Big Shot Pictures

Big Shot Pictures is a next generation animation company founded by Brian Robbins that produces the franchises of tomorrow. With a distinctive digital-first approach, the company builds global animation franchises across all platforms – from digital to theatrical, gaming to streaming, and consumer products to experiences.

About The Rol

eWe are seeking a Technical Animator to support and scale our Unreal Engine–first, real-time character and animation pipeline. This role operates at the intersection of animation, rigging, tools development, and engine integration, and is critical to ensuring characters and animation assets move efficiently from DCC tools into Unreal Engine. The ideal candidate is highly technical, production-minded, and passionate about building reliable, scalable animation systems

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This role will support the development of stylized, high-quality content for kids and family audiences, requiring a strong sense of performance, appeal, and character storytelling.

This is a temporary role which would report in-person at our studio in Los Angeles.

Responsibilities

• Build, skin, and maintain character rigs in Unreal Engine or DCC packages such as Blender
• Implement, maintain, and iterate on rigs using Unreal Engine Control
• RigSupport and evolve the MetaHuman pipeline, including setup, iteration, and engine integration.
• Organize, manage, and optimize large sets of animation and character data across multiple projects.
• Manage assets for efficient sharing, versioning, and real-time performance optimization.
• Collaborate closely with animators, character artists, and technical artists to solve pipeline and production challenges.
• Ensure clean, reliable integration of skeletal meshes and animation data in Unreal Engine.

Required Qualifications

• Proven experience skinning and rigging characters in a DCC package.
• Hands-on experience with Unreal Engine Control Rig in production.
• Strong understanding of asset organization, data management, and pipeline best practices.
• Experience managing and optimizing animation assets for real-time production.
• Familiarity with Unreal Engine MetaHuman workflows.
• Experience building animation or rigging tools in DCC packages.
• Ability to write and maintain tools using Python.

Nice to Have:

• Experience working with motion capture systems and performance capture data.
• Experience exporting, troubleshooting, and debugging skeletal and animation data in real-time engines.
• Familiarity with Unreal Engine Blueprints.
• Experience supporting across a wide range of styles, with an emphasis on stylized and appealing performance for kids and family content.
• Interest in emerging tools and workflows that improve efficiency, iteration, and scalability.