Senior 3D Animator

About Us Liquidnitro Games is India’s flagship live services and game production company, founded by industry veterans with a proven track record in producing massively successful games and live services. We offer world-class game development expertise to power creativity, growth, and profitability in games for companies, studios, and publishers worldwide. What’s in it? As a Senior 3D Animator, you will own the quality of character and gameplay animation across our mobile games. Partnering with the Art Director and Art Lead, you will set the animation style, lead animation for key characters, features, and live-service events, and mentor other animators. This is a hands-on role: alongside setting direction, you will personally animate a significant share of the content yourself. You will work closely with Game Designers, Engineers, Technical Artists, and 3D Artists to bring characters and gameplay to life, making sure every animation feels great, reads clearly on mobile, and runs efficiently in Unity. Responsibilities · Stay hands-on: personally keyframe, polish, and deliver character and gameplay animations every sprint, not just review and direct others. · Lead animation for major characters, features, and live-service events - idles, locomotion, attacks, reactions, celebrations, emotes, and cinematics - from blocking to shipped. · Set and maintain the animation style, timing, and personality of characters so they stay consistent across the game. · Create gameplay animations with strong game feel, clear readability, and responsive timing that supports game design. · Work with Technical Artists on rigs, skinning, and controls, and give clear feedback to improve them. · Implement and test animations in Unity - Animator controllers, state machines, blend trees, and events - and fix in-engine issues. · Optimize animations for mobile performance, keeping file size, bone count, and memory within budget. · Define animation standards, naming conventions, and documentation for the team. · Mentor mid-level and junior animators, review their work, and give clear, actionable feedback. · Estimate animation scope, plan tasks with production, and deliver on schedule for live-service cadences. Requirements · 10-12+ years of professional experience as a 3D Animator in game development, with at least 4 shipped titles (mobile preferred) where you owned major animation areas. · Outstanding reel showing strong character and gameplay animation, with a clear grasp of timing, weight, posing, and appeal. · Expert-level proficiency in Maya, 3ds Max, or Blender for keyframe animation. · Strong understanding of animation principles applied to both stylized and gameplay-driven animation. · Solid experience implementing and optimizing animations in Unity, including Mecanim and the Animator system. · Proven ability to define an animation style, not just match one, and keep it consistent at scale across a live game. · Excellent communication and leadership skills, with experience mentoring animators and bridging art, design, and engineering. · Proactive, self-driven, detail-oriented, and comfortable making decisions in a fast-paced live-service environment. Bonus · Experience working on casual, mid-core, social, or live-service mobile titles. · Rigging skills, or experience with tools like Advanced Skeleton, mGear, or Unity Animation Rigging. · Experience with facial animation, motion capture cleanup, or cinematic and marketing animation. · Basic VFX or 2D animation skills to support animation polish. · Familiarity with AI-assisted ideation used responsibly to accelerate exploration while maintaining strong artistic ownership and quality.