Cinematics Animator in Royal Leamington Spa

As a Senior Cinematics Animator, you\’ll work closely with our cinematics team to produce top-tier cutscenes and bespoke animation content. You will drive creative vision from previsualization through final polish, enhance narrative through cinematic storytelling, and ensure your animations are seamlessly integrated within our proprietary engine.

Responsibilities

• Capture, solve, retarget, and polish both facial and full-body mocap data for cutscenes, ensuring high‑quality, believable performances.
• Iterate rapidly on cinematic layout to enhance visual storytelling, refine pacing, and support narrative impact.
• Work closely with the Lead, Director, and cinematic team to incorporate feedback and align animations with the overall creative vision.
• Implement cinematics into our proprietary engine, ensuring seamless integration with gameplay and overall flow.

Qualifications

• We\’re looking for an expert animator who is passionate about storytelling, excels at conveying emotion through performance, and has a deep understanding of both facial and body performance. The ideal candidate has extensive experience with motion capture and hand‑keyed animation, as well as familiarity with implementing cinematics in‑engine. Five or more years in animation, with a proven track record on at least two published titles.
• Proficient in body, facial and camera animation, motion capture clean‑up and industry‑standard animation software.
• A genuine enthusiasm for video games, narrative, and the creative process.
• Experience in cinematography, editing, or game engine implementation is highly desirable and will set you apart.

Benefits

• Training Provided
• Regular team and company events
• Free drinks, fruit or food
• Flexible working
• Free Gym or Gym Subsidy
• Private Medical/Dental healthcare
• Bonus/Reward Scheme
• Childcare Vouchers
• Cycle to work scheme

Playground Games is looking for a Senior Cinematic Animator to join our talented Fable team here in Leamington Spa. As a first‑party Xbox Game Studio, we are passionate about making genre‑defining games that are accessible, beautiful, and, most of all, fun. We are excited to be rebooting the much‑loved Fable franchise and are expanding our diverse team to create a new classic in the action RPG genre. This is a fantastic opportunity to make world‑class games with an established, talented, and collaborative team at one of the industry\’s most exciting first‑party game studios.

Playground Games is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, we believe that diversity and inclusion fuels creativity. We are dedicated to creating a safe, comfortable and welcoming working environment. We strive to build an inclusive culture that encourages, supports and celebrates the diverse voices of our team members. It drives our innovation and connects us closer to our players. We are committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion across age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. At Playground Games we recognise the importance of self‑development, career progression, well‑being and retention of our colleagues. We celebrate difference and welcome everyone to join us and to be themselves at work.

Playground Games is an Xbox Game Studio and one of the highest rated video game developers in the world, with two AAA studios based in Leamington Spa.