Jobs Sao Tome and Principe

Rigging & Animation Artist (Trainee)

Job Title	Rigging & Animation Artist (Trainee)
Employer	Maplebind Co.
Adress: Country	Sao Tome and Principe
Address: City	Conde
Work type	Internship
Expected Salary	28788 STN
Posting Date	Tue Jun 10 2025
End Date	Mon Jul 07 2025

Description:

We’re hiring an Animator Trainee who’s passionate about character performance — someone who studies expressions, body language, and timing, and wants to make every movement feel alive. You’ll assist our animation team in creating believable, expressive motion for characters across games, cutscenes, or short films. We’ll teach you animation principles like timing, squash and stretch, anticipation, and how to apply them in different styles. You’ll help block out animation scenes, polish timing, and bring subtle gestures or bold actions to life. You’ll work with tools like Adobe After Effects, Toon Boom, Blender, or Unity — depending on your interest and the pipeline. We’ll guide you in understanding staging, silhouette readability, and how to make action readable even at a glance. You’ll be part of creative reviews where timing tweaks and spacing curves are discussed with care and clarity. Expect to contribute to animated assets that support UI transitions, in-game actions, cutscenes, or explainer videos. You’ll also learn how to animate in constraints, match existing styles, and keep things optimized for performance.

Basic Qualifications:

• Ensure animations loop smoothly and blend correctly with transitions or user actions.
• Work efficiently within tight feedback loops and shifting creative directions.
• Contribute to storyboards, animatics, or previsualizations to define timing and flow early.
• Understand how your animations support storytelling, gameplay, or emotional tone.
• Follow the project’s art direction and maintain consistency across all animated elements.

Preferred:

• Willing to adapt animation styles from hand-drawn and stylized to realistic and physics-based.
• Capable of rigging characters or using pre-built rigs to create expressive movement.
• Proficient in animation software such as Adobe After Effects, Toon Boom Harmony, Blender, or Maya.
• Understands how to optimize animation for mobile, web, or real-time rendering engines.
• Comfortable working in a cross-functional team alongside illustrators, designers, and developers.

Benefits:

• Access to premium tools — Toon Boom, Blender, Adobe Suite, or your weapon of choice.
• We don’t ask for “just a little bounce” — unless it makes sense.
• Creative retreats, animation jams, and the occasional Mario Kart showdown.
• Animate moments people will pause, replay, and screen-record.
• We care about smooth motion *and* your emotional well-being.

You’ll collaborate with illustrators and sound designers to align motion with design intent and audio rhythm. This role is perfect for someone who doodles in the margins, notices how characters blink in cartoons, and rewinds animation clips for fun. This role is perfect for someone who sketches out poses just to feel how they flow — and wants to get better every day. You’ll build confidence in working with timing charts, key poses, and pacing based on story beats or player feedback. You’ll work on production-ready content that contributes to real-world projects and your own demo reel. You’ll understand not just how to animate, but how to communicate visually through motion. You’ll leave with confidence in your craft, experience in production, and a stronger sense of what kind of animator you want to become. Let’s animate something memorable, one frame at a time.