Blue Zoo Animation Studio hiring Blender Character TD, 2026 in London

Blue Zoo Animation Studio is seeking a highly skilled and experienced Blender Character TD (Technical Director) to play a pivotal, anchoring role on an unannounced, high‑profile project. In this position, you will take full creative and technical ownership of our rigging, structural deformation, and digital puppeteering frameworks, establishing the core technical foundation that enables our animation teams to bring complex characters to life. This is a premier opportunity for a specialist who lives at the intersection of advanced anatomy simulation, procedural logic, and tool development. You will design next‑generation rigs built to withstand the rigorous demands of shortform, commercial, and cutting‑edge live‑capture workflows. As a senior technical voice within the department, you will collaborate heavily across disciplines, turning creative character designs into expressive, highly performant digital puppets while maintaining impeccable pipeline hygiene.

Core Responsibilities as Blender Character TD

• Rigging Architecture & System Design: End‑to‑End Asset Rigging: Conceptualize, build, test, and maintain a highly diverse array of asset and character rigs, ensuring they meet strict studio benchmarks for deformation quality, structural flexibility, and anatomical accuracy.
• Modular Rigging Pipelines: Implement and expand modular rigging systems (such as Rigify or CloudRig), optimizing asset turnaround times and allowing for rapid, procedural iterations across a high volume of characters.
• Geometry Nodes Innovation: Leverage Blender’s Geometry Nodes workflow to build procedural rig components, dynamic secondary motion systems, and optimized utility drivers that bypass heavy computational overhead.

Cross‑Department Collaboration & Workflow Integration

• Animator‑Centric Design: Collaborate directly with the animation department to design intuitive, ergonomic, and user‑friendly control interfaces. Proactively address layout feedback to minimize technical friction during high‑speed production cycles.
• Performance Capture & Puppetry: Partner with specialized technical teams to architect digital puppetry and performance capture pipelines, ensuring real‑time data inputs stream seamlessly into character skeletal structures.
• Interdepartmental Support: Provide proactive technical feedback and troubleshooting support to upstream (Modelling/LookDev) and downstream (Animation/Layout) departments, aligning technical deliverables with macro production schedules.

Tooling, Automation, and Pipeline Maintenance

• Blender API Development: Read, debug, extend, and rewrite existing studio tools using Python and the Blender Python API. Build bespoke add‑ons and UI extensions that streamline the rigging and animation layout environment.
• Version Control & Code Hygiene: Maintain pristine file architecture, strict nomenclature standards, and robust version control habits within shared group repositories, ensuring flawless asset deployment across distributed teams.
• System Diagnostics: Act as the primary tier of defense for rigging‑related technical hurdles, conducting meticulous debugging to keep studio animation pipelines reliable and crash‑free under tight deadlines.

Required Qualifications for Blender Character TD

• Professional Experience & Software Mastery: Industry Track Record: Verifiable professional experience working in a dedicated capacity as a Character TD, Rigging Artist, or Technical Animator within a high‑output commercial, VFX, or feature animation studio.
• Advanced Blender Expertise: Deep, comprehensive knowledge of Blender’s internal deformation matrices, constraint systems, drivers, armatures, and core 3D spatial principles.
• Technical Rigging Suites: High proficiency deploying and customizing standard modular rigging solvers, specifically CloudRig or Rigify.
• Procedural Toolsets: Demonstrated proficiency handling Blender’s Geometry Nodes engine for rigging utilities, asset variation, or complex visual setups.
• Production Python: Solid programming foundation in Python. You must be completely comfortable navigating the Blender Python API to write robust scripts, automate scene files, and support shared internal asset extensions.
• Collaborative Programming: Direct experience working within modular programming ecosystems and collaborating smoothly inside shared version‑control code repositories (e.g., Git).

Soft Skills & Delivery

• Quality Assurance: A meticulous, uncompromising eye for detail, with a proven ability to output consistent, quality‑assured, and thoroughly stress‑tested rigs across multi‑faceted projects.
• Agile Mindset: Highly self‑motivated, autonomous, and capable of prioritizing tasks effectively in tandem with production managers.
• Communication & Culture: Exceptional interpersonal skills, displaying the ability to communicate technical challenges to non‑technical artists clearly, accept constructive critique gracefully, and perform calmly under delivery pressures.

Bonus Points

• Prior experience acting as a Rigging Artist on long‑form episodic TV or feature‑length animated films.
• Hands‑on familiarity with advanced industry deployment and pipeline management frameworks such as Rez or Pyblish.
• Direct experience engineering live‑capture performance structures, facial tracking solvers, or real‑time digital puppetry applications.
• A public portfolio of published, open‑source Blender add‑ons or custom pipeline extension tools.

Established in London in 2000, Blue Zoo Animation Studio has grown to become the largest dedicated CG animation studio in the United Kingdom. Over the past two decades, we have built a world‑class reputation as the premier destination for bold, playful, and deeply characterful animation, earning an enviable collection of BAFTAs, an Annie, and an Emmy along the way. Blue Zoo Animation Studio is immensely proud to stand as the first major animation studio in the world to receive B Corp certification. Independently certified by B Lab, this designation verifies that our studio meets 170+ rigorous metrics tracking social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. We don’t just talk about progressive workplace ethics; we independently evidence them daily by ensuring our workers, communities, and environments thrive alongside our commercial success. Blue Zoo Animation Studio is currently undergoing an exciting phase of systemic growth. We are consciously cultivating an environment of uniquely talented, incredibly happy artists who make work they are genuinely proud of. We believe that a healthy work‑life balance is the cornerstone of creative excellence and workplace well‑being. We warmly welcome talent from all backgrounds, identities, and perspectives, encouraging our staff to “bring their whole selves” to work every day.

What We Offer You

• An Award‑Winning Workplace: Honored as one of the Broadcast Best Places to Work in TV across 2019, 2020, 2022, 2024, 2025, and consecutively in 2026.
• The BZ Shorts Programme: An inclusive, entirely self‑funded internal short film incubator allowing any employee—regardless of role or rank—to pitch, direct, and realize their own original creative ideas.
• Flexible Hybrid Infrastructure: Comprehensive remote‑work and hybrid‑flexibility options designed to support your personal lifestyle and mental well‑being.
• Financial Benefits & Profit Share: A highly competitive base salary structure coupled with an active Company Profit Share scheme for all employees crossing their 2‑year studio anniversary.
• Robust Wellness & Social Culture: Comprehensive physical and mental online wellbeing initiatives, corporate discount structures, and a thriving social ecosystem ranging from weekly studio gatherings to internal social clubs (including our Clay Club and the Blue Zoo Choir).