Artist & Animator: Character design for Companion Robots

Machani Robotics
is pioneering the next generation of social technology by building a desktop companion robot designed for empathetic care and companionship. We are seeking a highly creative and skilled
Artist & Animator
to define the entire personality of our robot. This is a chance to move beyond traditional entertainment and apply your animation skills to a product that will genuinely improve people's lives. Your work will directly determine how users feel, trust, and interact with our embodied AI.

The Impact: Designing the Robot's Soul

Your core mission is to bring our character to life through motion. You will be responsible for translating complex human emotional states (like empathy, focus, or curiosity) into a concise, non-human visual language on a small digital screen, perfectly synchronized with the robot's limited physical body movements. This is not just about animations for entertainment —you are designing core elements of human-robot interaction (HRI) through which people interact with technology and each other.

Key Responsibilities & Tasks

• Holistic Character Animation:
  Design, create, and implement the full range of animations
  that define the robot's personality, from its on-screen digital facial expressions to its physical gestures.
• Emotive Animation Library:
  Develop a comprehensive library of 2D facial animations
  using simple graphics (eyes, shapes, patterns) to convey a wide spectrum of emotions, including happiness, empathy, curiosity, and deep understanding.
• Physical Movement Prototyping:
  Conceptualize and prototype physical movements
  for the robot's body. You will collaborate closely with robotics engineers to translate digital motion concepts into smooth, lifelike real-world movements using the robot's limited degrees of freedom.
• Interaction Visualization:
  Develop storyboards, animatics, and character sketches to
  pre-visualize and iterate on complex robot behaviors
  and human interaction sequences.
• Companion App UX:
  Create engaging
  UI animations, transitions, and micro-interactions
  for the robot's companion mobile application, ensuring a delightful and intuitive user experience.
• Style Guide Ownership:
  Establish and maintain a
  consistent character design and animation style guide
  across all digital and physical platforms to ensure a cohesive and trustworthy brand identity.
• Technical Optimization:
  Optimize all animation assets
  (file size, frame rate, complexity) for real-time performance on the robot's embedded hardware and mobile devices.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration:
  Work closely with UI/UX designers, engineers, and product managers to ensure animation supports and enhances the overall user experience and cognitive flow of the interaction.

Required Skills & Experience

• Experience: 2
  -3 years of professional experience in 2D/3D animation, motion graphics, or a closely related digital art field.
• Portfolio:
  An outstanding portfolio showcasing strong skills in
  character animation, emotional expression, and motion graphics
  for digital products.
• Software Proficiency:
  High proficiency in industry-standard animation and design software (e.g.,
  Adobe After Effects, Adobe Animate, Toon Boom, Blender, Figma
  ).
• HRI/Psychology:
  A strong foundational understanding of
  human psychology and non-verbal communication
  , and the ability to apply these principles to create empathetic and trustworthy robot behaviors.
• Visual Storytelling:
  A strong grasp of
  visual storytelling
  and the ability to convey narrative and emotion without relying on words.
• Technical Design:
  Proven experience creating animations and micro-interactions for mobile or web applications and the ability to design assets suitable for efficient software implementation.

This is an opportunity to use your artistic skills to solve challenging problems in an emerging field. We're looking for someone ready to define what emotional intelligence looks like in robotics

Non-Negotiables: Don't Apply If...

• You only want to animate realistic human characters.
  Our work is focused on abstract, simple graphics for a small screen, not cinematic animation.
• You have little interest in human psychology or how people interact with technology.
  This role is about
  cognitive empathy
  , not just drawing.
• You expect unlimited performance resources.
  You must be a master of efficiency, optimizing every animation to run perfectly on small, constrained embedded hardware.
• You prefer working alone.
  You will be collaborating daily with engineers and product managers—a team-first, iterative mindset is mandatory.
• You are not interested in micro-interactions or abstract motion graphics.
  We need to see that you can convey big emotions with minimal movement.

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