Associate Animation Director, Living World - Elsewhere Entertainment

Activision Blizzard, Inc. • Santa Monica, CA

3d • $126,800 - $234,580

About The Position

Elsewhere Entertainment is looking for an Associate Animation Director, Living World to help shape the animation vision for an exciting new IP. In this role, you will define and champion the animation vision for the living world, creating believable, reactive, and memorable experiences that bring the game world to life. You will partner closely with Animation, Design, Engineering, Art, Audio, and Narrative teams to guide the development of systemic behaviors, ambient character interactions, and authored world vignettes that enrich player immersion and support the game's creative vision. As a senior creative leader, you will align teams around a shared vision, drive cross-disciplinary collaboration, mentor animators, and help ensure that living-world experiences achieve the highest standards of quality, authenticity, and player impact.

Requirements

• Extensive experience in game animation, including leadership responsibilities on one or more shipped AAA titles.
• Proven experience leading multidisciplinary teams and influencing creative direction across departments.
• A deep understanding of how animation, AI, gameplay systems, narrative, audio, and environmental storytelling work together to create immersive worlds.
• Experience directing or developing systemic content, such as ambient behaviors, contextual interactions, social systems, crowds, environmental storytelling, or living-world features.
• Strong creative vision and the ability to communicate that vision clearly to diverse teams and stakeholders.
• Exceptional collaboration, communication, and relationship-building skills.
• A strong foundation in animation principles, acting, physicality, timing, staging, and visual storytelling.
• Experience working with game engines, animation systems, state machines, blending, procedural techniques, and implementation pipelines.
• The ability to balance creative ambition with technical constraints, scalability requirements, and production realities.
• A thoughtful and constructive leadership style that inspires trust, ownership, and team growth.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguity while maintaining forward momentum.
• Proficiency with Maya and familiarity with modern motion-capture and game-animation pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Defining and driving the animation vision for living-world systems, ambient behaviors, environmental interactions, and authored vignettes.
• Establishing and maintaining a high creative and quality bar for content that makes the world feel alive, reactive, and full of character.
• Leading cross-functional teams to deliver cohesive living-world experiences from concept through implementation and polish.
• Partnering with Design, Engineering, Art, Audio, and Narrative to ensure animation enhances gameplay systems, worldbuilding, storytelling, and player immersion.
• Translating high-level creative goals into clear direction, priorities, and actionable plans for development teams.
• Guiding the development of scalable animation systems that support emergent gameplay, contextual behaviors, and dynamic world interactions.
• Reviewing work in context, providing creative feedback, and helping teams solve complex artistic, technical, and production challenges.
• Mentoring animators and animation leads while fostering a culture of collaboration, craftsmanship, and continuous improvement.
• Identifying creative risks, dependencies, and opportunities early, and aligning teams around effective solutions.
• Driving improvements to workflows, tools, and production practices that enable the creation of high-quality systemic content at scale.
• Collaborating with animation leadership to ensure a consistent animation vision across gameplay, narrative, creatures, cinematics, and living-world experiences.
• Representing living-world animation in planning, reviews, milestone assessments, and cross-department decision-making.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others
• Relocation assistance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed