Junior Animator

Duration: Immediate Start – 18 December 2026Location: Remote (Must be within ±2 hours of London/BST timezone)Rate: £130 – £180 per day (Dependent on experience)The RoleWe are looking for a dedicated and eager Contract Animator to join our team through to the end of 2026. This is a fantastic opportunity for a junior animator looking to apply their skills on a live project, at a key stage of development.You will work closely with our Lead Artist, reviewing existing animations and elevating them through a dedicated polish pass. Your primary focus will be on character movement and combat, to create a medieval world that players enjoy interacting with.What You'll Be DoingAnimation Polish: Elevating existing animations and block-outs by refining weight, perfecting arcs, and adding the secondary motion that brings a character to life.Combat Upgrades: Reviewing and enhancing our current combat animation library to improve the "feel" of gameplay.Workflow Collaboration: Working within pre-set scenes and timings provided by the Lead Artist to ensure consistency across the project.Tool Adoption: Utilising Reallusion iClone as our primary animation tool, along with Blender.What We're Looking ForThe Fundamentals: A rock-solid grasp of the 12 principles of animation. You know how to convey weight and personality, whether it's a soldier in heavy armor or a peasant at work.Pure Animation Focus: We are looking for an animator who loves animating and has the eye and skills to efficiently work through a set of animations. You won't be bogged down with technical implementation; your mission is to bring the game to life.Willingness to Learn: We use a specific pipeline involving Reallusion iClone. We appreciate that most people will not be familiar with iClone so you'll need to be able to quickly learn a new set of tools.Detail-Oriented: A passion for the "polish pass"—the difference between something that works and something that looks great.Hit the Ground Running: This is a live project at a crucial point in the development cycle. We need someone with the skills and confidence to jump into a project alongside experienced developers and make a major contribution from day one.RequirementsBlender Experience: A good knowledge and proven experience animating within Blender is highly desirable.Portfolio: A strong showreel demonstrating character and combat animation.Bonus: Familiarity with Unreal Engine or Reallusion iClone (though we are happy to train the right candidate).About Firefly StudiosCreators of the BAFTA nominated Stronghold series, Firefly Studios is a Devolver Digital strategy game developer with 25 years of experience publishing games on PC and mobile. Enjoyed worldwide by a community of millions, our games have a dedicated international following and rich legacy in strategy gaming.As a company we are a growing, close-knit interdisciplinary group of around 40 people from across the world. All staff across programming, art, production, business, marketing and QA are talented, self-driven individuals who help us punch well above our weight as a studio.At Firefly we value and benefit from individual expression and passion, which we do our best to nurture, support and channel into our games. We believe this, combined with a flexible working environment and room to grow at the company, makes Firefly a great place to work whether you're starting out in games or looking for an empowering next step.LocationAlthough we have a London office, we have moved to a flexible working system allowing everyone at Firefly to either work fully remotely or combine working remotely with working in the office.Your Name *Your Email *Covering LetterCV *Online PortfolioYour Message (Optional)