Animator (Gameplay & Motion Matching)

We're looking for an Animator to join our team as we move into full production on our debut game Ardem, an open world survival game developed in Unreal Engine 5.

In this role, your focus is making Ardem's characters move like real people and its zombies move like something that used to be. We're going for grounded, natural, realistic animation, built on Epic's Game Animation Sample Project (GASP) and motion matching. You won't be animating everything from scratch: a big part of the job is taking existing animation packs from Fab and other stores, cleaning them up, reworking them and fitting them into our motion matching setup so that the result looks like it was made for Ardem — not bought for it. You'll work closely with our Tech Animator, Gameplay Programming and Tech Art, and you'll have real influence on how our animation pipeline evolves.

One thing we care about a lot: we want people who actually play survival games. If you've spent hundreds of hours in the genre, you know the difference between a character that feels heavy and grounded. That's also why we'd love it if you share your Steam profile with your application — not as a gate, we're just genuinely curious where your gaming interests lie and how much they overlap with what we're building.

Techtive Games is an ambitious indie studio based in Germany with a close knit team that focuses on building deep, interconnected gameplay systems and immersive, authentic worlds. We value creativity, ownership, and personal growth. Rather than working through rigid ticket pipelines, our team members are encouraged to actively shape systems, improve workflows, and grow together not only on Ardem, but on future projects as well.

If you love making characters feel alive — and the dead feel uncomfortably close to alive — we'd love to hear from you.

Tasks

On a day to day basis, you will:

• Build and expand player locomotion and traversal on top of GASP: motion matching, Pose Search databases, Choosers and the Mover-based character setup

• Rework, clean up and adapt store animation packs (Fab and others): fixing foot sliding, pops and contact issues, adjusting timing and weight, and making sets from different sources feel like one consistent character

• Retarget and prepare animation data for our skeletons and characters, including curves, root motion and the metadata motion matching needs

• Create and polish realistic gameplay animations for survival: interactions, gathering and crafting, melee and ranged combat, hit reactions, injuries and deaths

• Build the zombie animation set: locomotion, attacks, hit reactions, staggers, falls and get-ups — realistic and believable, not cartoonish

• Work with physics-based animation: ragdolls, physical hit reactions and motion-matched get-ups that blend back into animation

• Use Control Rig and in-engine tools for fixes, layering and procedural adjustments (look-at, foot placement, pose warping)

• Keep animation performant in a large open world with many characters on screen — LODs, animation budgeting and sensible database sizes

• Work closely with our Tech Animator, Gameplay Programming and Tech Art to make sure animations hold up in-game, not just in the viewport

• Help troubleshoot and fix problems as they arise, from a visual, technical, and production perspective

Requirements

• Previous experience on professional game projects

• Hands-on experience with motion matching in Unreal Engine — ideally with GASP — including building and debugging Pose Search databases

• A proven track record of reworking and integrating third-party animation (store packs, mocap libraries) to a consistent quality bar

• A strong eye for realistic human motion: weight, balance, momentum and timing

• Solid experience with motion capture cleanup and editing

• Strong skills in a major animation package (Maya, MotionBuilder or Blender)

• A reel and/or portfolio that shows in-game results, not just playblasts. On team pieces, tell us exactly what you did yourself; we do check.

• Solid understanding of retargeting, root motion and the Unreal animation pipeline (Animation Blueprints, Choosers, Blend Spaces, Montages)

• Ability to resolve issues from a visual, technical, and production perspective

• Strong communication skills — you can articulate ideas and questions across departments, and give and receive constructive feedback

• We'd appreciate a link to your Steam profile, so we can get a feel for where your interests lie and where they overlap with ours

• Fluent spoken and written English

Bonus Skills

• Experience with Control Rig and in-engine animation authoring

• Experience with physics-based animation (Physics Control, physical animation, ragdoll blending)

• Creature or zombie animation experience

• Experience with multiplayer animation (replication, network-friendly setups)

• Experience setting up animation for many AI characters at once (crowds, animation budgeting)

• Experience working on open world games

• Experience working in an indie or small team environment

Working Model

• Fully remote

• Freelance, with a full time option for candidates based in Germany

• Flexible working hours with a strong focus on ownership and trust

• Direct collaboration within a small, focused team

Benefits

• Work on Ardem, a highly anticipated survival game — and help set a new benchmark for the genre you love

• Small team with high impact, results-driven mindset and fast decision-making

• High ownership and creative freedom — shape how Ardem moves, don't just fill tickets

• Work with the latest UE5 animation tech (motion matching, Choosers, physics-based animation)

• Flexible working hours (results > green dots)

How We Hire

1. First interview — We talk about Techtive, Ardem, and the role, and get a high-level picture of your skills and how you work.

2. Animation test — If the first conversation goes well, you'll receive a small, practical test: a set of store animations and a basic brief. Your job is to rework and integrate them into a GASP-based motion matching setup so they look natural and grounded in-game. We're not looking for a beautiful isolated clip — we want to see it working on a character you can actually control. There's no fixed deadline, but we'll ask you to track roughly where your time went.

3. Second interview — We go through your test together: your decisions, your process, and where you spent your time.

4. Culture fit — The final conversation is less about craft and more about people: how you like to work, what you expect from a team, and whether we actually fit each other. We're a small, fully remote crew — who you are matters as much as what you build. The practical side (contract, conditions, start date) gets sorted here too.

We know a test is a real time investment, and not everyone can afford that easily — we don't take it for granted. It's the fairest way we've found to judge actual craft over a polished reel, and it's the basis for a much better conversation in round two.