Hello!

It's me, your friendly neighborhood Adam Saltsman, director and co-founder of Finji, an award-winning game developer (Overland, Canabalt) and publisher (Tunic, Chicory, Night in the Woods) located in Grand Rapids, MI. We are ready to hire a rigging artist to help us make Usual June.

This is a temporary work-for-hire contract for a specific set of assets. We are accepting remote collaborators for this role. You would be refining and/or creating human rigs for use in a Unity game, plus doing a mix of updating and freshly painting weights on their associated meshes. Finji works with a diverse set of collaborators and folks from under-represented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

We will be accepting applications until May 13, 2025.

The Job

This position would begin with a fully compensated two-week trial period in June 2025 before moving ahead with the full contract period.

Trial Period Responsibilities

• Create a new human gameplay rig for an NPC

This NPC rig is intended to be used on mostly stationary characters who have limited facial expressions but legible, satisfying body language and gestures. It does not have to support extreme poses or intense locomotion.

Full Contract Responsibilities

• Refine 3 human gameplay rigs that already have animation clips
  • possible blend-shape-based fixes for deformation on the most detailed rig + mesh
• Create 6 new human gameplay rigs of varying detail
• Weight-painting 13 associated meshes
• Work closely with the existing core creative team
  • Collaborate with the art director, animator, and character modeler
  • Develop high utility rigs with appropriate granularity
  • Weight-painting associated meshes so we can validate rigs in-engine
• All rigs and weights need to be done in Maya
• All files managed through a Github LFS asset repository

You will not be expected to attend weekly standups, but should expect to be available for short video calls when it’s the best way to handle coordination or detailed feedback.

Compensation

• Competitive hourly or per-asset (by contractor preference)

About You

You love to create granular, flexible, and effective human gameplay rigs that support elegant deformations and are fun to animate. You know all about blend shapes. You are careful and thoughtful about weight painting, and it’s important to you that the art department’s needs are met. Knowing the animator can do what they need to do and that the gameplay is directly supported by your work is deeply satisfying. You have a strong creative voice, but still know how to put the design needs of the project first. You've shipped at least two games.

You’re a good communicator. If someone asks you “Can we do \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_?” you usually answer in one of the following ways:

• “Sure! Put it on my list.”
• “I don't understand why you would want this. Can you explain?”
• “It sounds cool, but it will cost X time / energy. Is it worth it?”
• “We can’t do that, but maybe we can do something else to address the underlying need?”

When you don’t know how to do something, you research it and make a plan. Most of these plans are good, but you’re open to feedback and ideas from people outside your discipline. You clearly understand what problem we’re all trying to solve before getting to work on a detailed solution.

How to Apply

We’re funneling all interested parties through a new email address (click the apply button). Please include the phrase “finji rigging artist” in the subject line. We will reply to all serious inquiries in a timely fashion.

What to Submit

• Short cover letter
• Portfolio site
• Resumé or CV (with clear indication of shipped products and your role on those teams)
• Current location

You should expect to provide references or letters of recommendation if your application advances.

Final Thoughts

Even if you don’t have the longest resumé or the biggest portfolio, we’d still love to hear from you. We are looking for candidates that like to solve problems in creative ways and who are good at communicating and collaborating. In our …experience, experience doesn’t guarantee those particular qualities.

A majority of Finji staff are from backgrounds under-represented in games. Even if you don't see yourself represented in the rest of the game industry, this might be a good place for you.