Technical Artist - Animation

Keywords Studios Singapore is currently looking to expand its team. We're currently looking for AAA, experienced Technical Animation Artists. These opportunities can be located in either Malaysia, or Indonesia (Remote). This is a permanent, full time position.

Keywords Studios is a global leader providing art services to AAA Publishers. Our work can be seen across many of the top selling titles on console and PC. We've secured an exciting AAA IP project and anticipating further project announcements early in 2026. You'll get to work alongside seasoned developers bringing expertise from world class AAA studios.

The Animation Technical Artist plays a key role in bridging art and engineering to bring characters, creatures, and animated worlds to life. This role contributes to animation-driven R&D, builds tools and pipelines that empower animators, and ensures high-quality, performant character systems across the studio’s projects.

An Technical Animation Artist at Keywords Studios:

Collaboration & Support

• Work closely with animators, character artists, and gameplay engineers to ensure efficient workflows and high-fidelity animated content.
• Translate the technical requirements of the animation team into actionable solutions for engineering and pipeline teams.
• Diagnose and resolve complex animation-related issues including rig behavior, deformation quality, skeletal hierarchies, retargeting, and physics performance.

Rigging, Simulation & Animation Systems

• Design, build, and maintain modular, animator-friendly rigs for characters, creatures, props, facial animation, and mechanical assets.
• Implement and refine physics-based systems including ragdoll setups, cloth simulation, spline dynamics, secondary motion, and procedural animation solutions.
• Develop scalable animation blueprints, state machines, blend trees, and control rigs in Unreal or Unity.
• Integrate motion capture data, build retargeting pipelines, and ensure consistent motion quality across diverse character sets.

Tools, Pipelines & Optimisation

• Create and maintain tools, scripts, and automated pipelines that improve animation productivity and asset quality.
• Build validation tools to enforce naming conventions, skeleton standards, rig integrity, and performance budgets.
• Profile and optimise animation systems, rig performance, runtime solvers, and physics setups to work efficiently within hardware constraints.
• Participate in cross-discipline R&D to establish best practices for real-time deformation, procedural animation, and advanced simulation workflows.

Requirements

Programming & Scripting

• Experience with: Python, C#, MEL, PyMEL, MAXScript, Blueprints (Unreal), Editor Tools (Unity)
• Understanding of runtime animation systems, rig solvers, and physics components
• Familiarity with shader scripting (HLSL/GLSL) is a plus, particularly for deformation or skinning R&D
  

Skills

• Character & Creature Rigging
• Cloth / Hair / Ragdoll / Physics Setup
• Animation Pipeline Development
• Procedural Animation & Secondary Motion
• Performance Profiling & Optimisation
• Motion Capture Integration

• Tool & Workflow Development

Software / Tools

• Unreal Engine (Control Rig, Physics, Animation Blueprints)
• Unity (Mecanim, Animation Rigging Package, DOTS animation optional)
• Maya, 3DS Max (rigging, scripting, tool creation)
• Houdini (procedural rigs, physics, motion tools a bonus)

• Perforce, Git, plus standard DCC tools such as Photoshop, Substance.