Associate Art Director (Animation) - F/M/NB

Join Tara Gaming as an Associate Art Director for Animation. In this role, you will guide the animation department in achieving AAA quality standards, collaborate closely with various departments, and proactively identify and resolve production issues. You will have the opportunity to work remotely and enjoy competitive compensation and benefits.

• Partner with Creative Direction to define and own the animation vision across characters, gameplay, combat, cinematics, and narrative performance.
• Proactively identify creative, technical, and production issues affecting animation and drive them toward resolution.
• Collaborate closely with Game Design, Character Art, Rigging, Technical Animation, VFX, Narrative, and Production.

Hard skills

• Mandatory

• Significant professional experience in **AAA or high-quality game animation**, ideally including experience as an Animation Lead, Associate Animation Director, Animation Director, or equivalent.

• Demonstrated ability to **originate animation direction**, not only execute or supervise an existing vision.

• Strong gameplay animation experience, particularly **combat, locomotion, animation systems, and character-driven gameplay**.

• Ability to communicate creative intent through references, briefs, visual examples, reviews, and direct feedback.

• Comfortable working across disciplines and resolving ambiguous or conflicting requirements.

• Proactive and solution-oriented, with the ability to take ownership without waiting for problems to be escalated.

• Experience working with modern real-time animation pipelines and engines such as **Unreal Engine** or equivalent.

• Excellent communication skills and confidence presenting and defending creative decisions.

• Nice to have

• Motion capture direction and performance capture.

• Cinematic and narrative animation.

• Building or evolving animation pipelines and review processes.

• Experience working with distributed teams and external partners.

• Knowledge of Indian movement traditions, martial arts, performance, or cultural references—or a strong ability and willingness to research them authentically.