In a recent shareholders’ Q&A briefing, Capcom revealed interesting insights about its workforce – about half the company’s development staff specializes in character animation and visual effects. Capcom had 2,846 development staff as of the end of March 2025 – meaning more than 1,400 of them are working in animation-related roles.
Moreover, Capcom’s answer comes in response to an inquiry about staffing shortages, and the company says it’s actively working on strengthening recruitment for these roles, suggesting they’re still in need of more animators. To this end, Capcom has even acquired subsidiaries specializing in animation and visual production.
As is evident from their AAA titles, particularly the Monster Hunter series, Capcom places high importance on realistic character animation. In 2023, they established the new Creative Studio, a facility that houses 150 cameras, including state-of-the-art, ultra-high-resolution models, in one of Japan’s largest motion capture stages (11m × 15m × 5m), allowing for large-scale motion capture sessions. The studio is also integrated with Capcom’s in-house Re Engine. In addition, one of Capcom’s recent acquisitions, Swordcanes Studio, is known for its strength in video production and has a solid track record in animation, which tells of Capcom’s focus on enhancing its capabilities in this field.
While Capcom is significantly upsizing its overall workforce as of recently (with a target of 100 new employees each year), it seems they’re particularly focused on acquiring talent in the fields of character animation and visual effects. Japan is in the midst of a severe shortage of high-skilled animators, which has been worsening ever since the Covid-era. This has been a problem not only for the anime industry, but for the game industry too, where, according to industry professionals, “it’s not just companies fighting over skilled animators, but different departments within companies grappling to get animators on their projects.”
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