Rigging Artist

Rigging artists build the skeletons, controls and deformation that let characters and objects be animated.

A rigging artist takes a finished model and makes it movable: joint placement, skinning and weighting, control rigs animators can work with quickly, blend shapes for faces, and corrective setups so shoulders, hips and cloth hold up under extreme poses. The rig also has to survive the engine, which means watching joint counts and how deformation is evaluated at runtime.

Tool knowledge is concrete: Maya or 3ds Max, scripting in Python for rig builders and validation, and engine-side setup of animation blueprints or graphs.

A character artist delivers the mesh, an animator delivers the performance. Rigging sits between them and decides what performances are possible at all, which is why postings often pair it with technical animation and expect someone comfortable being asked for a feature mid-production.

Where these positions are: Newcastle upon Tyne (2 positions), Barcelona (1 position), Berlin (1 position)