[PAID] 3D Character Animator / Generalist — Blender + Unreal Engine 5

I'm looking for a 3D Character Animator / Generalist to help with character and first-person animation work for an anime-inspired card game prototype being developed in Unreal Engine 5.

The project focuses heavily on making the player feel like an actual duelist, so hands, fingers, cards, body language and interaction with a wearable card device are a major part of the experience.

Initial paid test

For the first milestone, I need help creating/refining a small set of animations using an existing rigged character/hand model:

• First-person pose holding 5 trading cards in a fan
• First-person Draw Card animation
• First-person Reach / Select Card animation
• First-person Grab Card animation
• Natural finger posing and card grip
• Basic transition back to an idle/ready pose

References and existing models/rigs will be provided.

What I'm looking for

Strong experience with:

• Blender or Maya
• Character animation
• Rigging / skinning
• Hand and finger animation
• Body mechanics
• Working with props
• Clean FBX/game-ready export workflow

Experience with Unreal Engine 5 is highly appreciated, especially:

• Animation Blueprints
• Animation Montages
• IK / Control Rig
• Retargeting
• First-person animation

However, deep Unreal knowledge is not mandatory if you're strong in character animation and can deliver clean game-ready assets.

Animation style

The direction is anime-inspired and expressive, but still grounded enough to work well in first-person gameplay.

Examples of the type of motion I'm looking for:

• confident card draws;
• dramatic but readable hand gestures;
• expressive finger movement;
• physically believable card handling;
• duelist poses;
• interaction with cards and a wearable Duel Disk-style device.

The challenge is not simply making an animation look good from a cinematic camera — it needs to feel good from the player's first-person perspective.

Important

I already have the gameplay prototype running in Unreal Engine.

I'm specifically looking for help improving the visual/animation quality and building a reusable animation pipeline, rather than someone to program the game itself.

The long-term goal is to establish reusable standards for:

• first-person hand animations;
• third-person duelist animations;
• card handling;
• Duel Disk interaction;
• character gestures;
• summon/activation animations;
• character rigs;
• eventually creature/monster animations.

Workflow

I'd prefer to start with a small paid milestone rather than immediately committing to a large package.

The first test would be:

1. Hold Cards pose
2. Draw Card animation
3. Reach / Grab Card animation

If the collaboration works well, there is potentially a significant amount of ongoing character, creature and gameplay animation work.

When applying

Please send:

• portfolio / animation reel;
• examples of character animation;
• examples involving hands, props or first-person animation if available;
• software you primarily use;
• whether you have experience with Unreal Engine;
• your rate or expected price for the initial test.

I'm much more interested in seeing good character movement, posing and animation fundamentals than a specific job title.

Remote freelance work.

I’m prototyping a multiplayer Yu-Gi-Oh fan game focused on making you feel like the duelist rather than controlling a board from above. The world is third person, but duels are immersive first person with physical cards, duel disks and 3D monsters. I’m currently trying to validate whether this is actually more immersive or just more cumbersome.
Totally made from scratch and zero knowledge about unreal engine, so ma bad for my unexpertise and ugly things.