We’re Failbetter Games, an award-winning independent games studio and makers of Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, Mask of the Rose and Fallen London.

We're looking for a freelance 3D animator to help us with an unannounced project, which takes place in a new fantasy setting with a combination of 2D and 3D art. We’ll get into much more detail below, but first, here are some key points to help you decide if it’s worth reading on:

• Paid at your preferred hourly rate
• Work from (almost) anywhere
• Work mostly when you want to
• Around a hundred animations needed, over one or two years
• Application deadline: 31 March 2025

The Work

We need someone to help us with rigging and skinning for various 3D models, and then to create a range of animations for them. Here is the work we’ve identified so far, which will be spread out over the next one or two years.

• Rigging and skinning for around 20 3D models with broadly human-realistic proportions, in a style that’s slightly heightened.
• ~20 animations shared between the player and NPCs, including basic ones like walking or running.
• ~25 animations for actions the player can take in the world.
• ~30 animations unique to individual NPCs, of varying complexity. Some might include actions like repairing a machine, while others will be simpler static poses they might transition in and out of during dialogue.
• A couple of animations for small animals.
• About half a dozen animations for other non-human models.

This is necessarily a bit vague since we aren’t ready to announce the game yet; if we shortlist the application, we’ll offer to show you the game so we can discuss the work more concretely.

The overall amount of work is significant. If your availability allows, we’d be happy to work with a single person on most or all of the above. But even if you could only take on a portion of it, we’d be very glad to hear from you – we don’t mind dividing the work between a few people.

It’s likely we’ll identify more animations we’d like to add later, so we may be able to offer further work after the above is complete, if you remain available.

Who Can Apply

• We don’t require some arbitrary number of years’ experience, just that you have the necessary skills in 3D skinning, animation and rigging.
• You can work anywhere so long as we’re able to pay you. Fortunately, that’s most places: the main exception we know of is Russia, due to sanctions.
• You’ll need some availability to speak during UK working hours – for more details, please see the next section.
• You must be able to assign ownership of the animations to us. If you’d be working on them while employed somewhere else, please check your contract: some companies assert ownership of anything you make.
• Right now, we’re looking to work with specific individuals. Please don’t contact us if you represent an outsourcing studio or similar organisation.

How We’ll Work Together

We’d like to add you as a guest to our company Slack, so our artists and producer can talk through upcoming work, discuss feedback, or provide any support you need more efficiently than over email. We’re based in the UK, so you’ll need to have some availability to speak between 10:00 and 17:00 UK time, when most of us are working.

You don’t have to be available every day or during any particular part of that window, and we also won’t expect you to respond immediately. But we’d generally like to be able to reach you for a discussion within a few days while you have work in progress, unless you’ve let us know you aren’t going to be available for a period. It’s likely we’d also want to schedule occasional video calls, though we expect the frequency of those could vary a lot based on your needs and preferences.

We’re using Unity for this project. It might make sense for you to implement animations in Unity if you have relevant prior experience (and if that’s the case, please let us know in your application). However, we’ve made some animations ourselves to investigate the pipeline and expect it will be straightforward for us to handle implementation. If you aren’t used to doing this already, we’ll probably just provide some guidelines on how to provide the animations in a form that will make this easy for our artists.

Internally, we share most art, design and writing work for feedback, and make changes based on that. We expect we’ll often request revisions to your work, too, so it’s important that you be comfortable with that.

This is a freelance arrangement, and the amount of work we can offer may vary month to month. If you keep us informed about your availability, we may be able to adapt to your needs – for instance, unblocking a set of animations in advance if you’ve let us know you’ll have a period with greater availability, or pacing things out if we know you can generally do ten hours a week.

We’ll credit you for your work. We won’t use it to train AI, and also require that you not use AI in any work performed for us.

Pay

• This is the first time we’ll be working with a 3D animator, so we don’t know much about typical rates for this kind of work. Because of that, we ask that you let us know your hourly rate when you apply.
• This can be in pounds sterling or US dollars: we’re able to make payments in either.
• If we think the rate you’re proposing is too low, we’ll ask you to bill us at a higher rate (this has happened before).
• If your application gets shortlisted, we’ll share more information about the project and the work that will be available, and ask for your help estimating how long each type of task may take, so we can properly cost everything.

How to Apply

If you’re interested, you can write to us by 9:00 BST on 31 March 2025. Please include these details:

• ‘3D Animator’, in the subject line.
• Your preferred hourly rate, in US dollars or pounds sterling.
• The location you’ll be working from, so we can confirm we’ll be able to pay you.
• Any information you can share about your likely availability: for example, when you could potentially start, how much time you could put towards this a week, how far in the future the picture gets more uncertain.
  • As mentioned above, we don’t need or expect you to be available indefinitely, and you don’t have to be able to do everything we have available; we’re happy to split things between multiple freelancers. We just need to be able to see how working with you might fit more broadly into the game’s development.
• Portfolio links, so we can get an initial sense of your work. If there are examples you think may be especially relevant, please link them directly or otherwise draw our attention to them, but don’t worry about this too much – we appreciate the unannounced nature of the project may make this more difficult than it otherwise would be.
  • To make this a bit easier for us, please use a format we’ll be able to view without installing specialised software.
• A resume, if you have one. If not, don’t feel you have to put one together – just include a sentence or two explaining your relevant experience/background in your email.
• Anything else you’d like us to know when we consider your application!

What to Expect After Applying

If we shortlist your application, we expect to get back to you within three weeks of the deadline.

Even if we’re not looking to move ahead with your application, we should be able to let you know as much within the same timeframe. If that happens, it’s still possible we’ll follow up with you at a later time unless you asked us not to (or indicated a cut off on your availability).

The only case when you shouldn’t expect to hear from us is if you represent an outsourcing agency or similar and contacted us even though we asked you not to.

If you’re shortlisted, we’ll ask you to sign an NDA and also invite you to a video call so we can talk in more detail about how we might work together; we'll also show you the game we’re working on. We’ll discuss some example tasks, and ask you – not on the call – to think about how long they might take. This will help us cost the work and also see how it would fit with the rest of the project timeline.