Step inside and feel the creative energy that fuels our passion for animation.
Welcome to Motion Grinder
Welcome to Motion Grinder Studio & Crew
This is our creative home base — where ideas spark innovation in every corner.
Step inside and feel the creative energy that fuels our passion for animation.
Coffee breaks, casual chats, and a welcoming vibe bring us closer together. These moments spark our best ideas and keep our team spirit alive.
From animators refining the smallest details to colleagues offering fresh perspectives, every desk is a hive of creativity and teamwork.
Our open-concept spaces are designed for brainstorming and big thinking. This is where raw concepts transform into captivating creations.
The Team
Meet our dedicated local team, the driving force behind our project productions. Their expertise and coordination are the backbone that empowers our remote teams to operate seamlessly and efficiently
Nowadays, he’s all about refining workflows, empowering his team to bring bold ideas to life, and tinkering with Head Mounted Cameras that occasionally resemble futuristic headgear. Focused yet open-minded, Sigtor fosters an environment where fresh perspectives thrive, while streamlined processes keep everyone on track.
Whether he’s debugging a face scanner or brainstorming the next big innovation, he brings contagious enthusiasm to every project. In short, Sigtor’s hands-on approach and supportive energy ensure each production runs smoothly from start to finish.
Trained at the Academy of Music and Drama in Gothenburg, he brings a performer’s understanding of storytelling, physical expression and the demands of a capture shoot to the production team.
From fantastical creatures to photoreal digital doubles, Jonas is known for his sharp eye for detail, honed at Weta Digital and Framestore, and through AAA teams at DICE and MachineGames. Despite a résumé packed with big titles, he’s a down-to-earth mentor who’s just as happy perfecting a tiny wrinkle in from a face scan as sharing a laugh with the team.
Now back at Motion Grinder, Jonas leads our character creation services, bringing a rare mix of artistic vision, deep experience, and collaborative energy, so our digital characters don’t just look real, they feel alive.
Under his guidance, Pixel Grinder's legacy of exceptional quality and innovative techniques thrived. Nils’s rare blend of programming prowess, artistic insight, and deep anatomy knowledge bridges the gap between the visual and the technical.
Now, he’s using that expertise to develop our advanced facial animation pipeline, boosting productivity and marking a bold departure from outdated methods. By merging art and code seamlessly, Nils elevates both our projects and the entire field of digital human creation.
Her proficiency spans ZBrush, texturing, Unreal, and photogrammetry, all underpinned by the solid foundation she built at Future Games.
What truly sets Adrina apart is her rare blend of artistic vision and technical acumen. This fusion, coupled with her unwavering attention to detail, makes her indispensable in every facet of our work—from designing intricate HMC hardware components to tackling the technical complexities of our facial animation pipeline.
By seamlessly blending art and technology, Adrina elevates quality and precision throughout our projects, ensuring that we consistently deliver excellence in all that we do.
Over the next eight months, she dove into our mocap pipeline, from setting up cameras to polishing facial and body animations in Unreal Engine and Maya.
By September 2024, we knew we had to make her our Junior Animator. Wilma’s curiosity and lightning-fast learning curve drive her constant growth, while her unwavering enthusiasm lifts the entire team.
She may be new in the industry, but she’s already proving that talent, focus, and the perfect mix of creative energy and determination make all the difference.
Since then, he’s built games, designed and animated bosses, written C# tools, and polished mocap data across engines and studios. At Nexile, he helped shape Jump King Quest, pairing gameplay intuition with sharp animation timing.
Now reunited with the Motion Grinder crew, Jonathan brings a rare mix of creativity and engineering thinking to every project. Whether it’s gameplay animation, system logic, or pipeline efficiency, he’s the quiet engine powering complex work behind the scenes.
Ida’s all about balancing creative chaos with calm oversight—she keeps the daily details in check while nurturing a positive atmosphere for everyone involved. Her passion for wellness also means you might find a healthy snack alongside your project notes.
By blending organizational savvy with genuine care, Ida ensures the Motion Grinder family stays motivated, focused, and supported, proving that dedication and well-being can go hand in hand.
Sigtor Kidal
CEO / HMC Supervisor
Sigtor is the driving force behind Motion Grinder, fueled by a passion for Motion Capture and a knack for creative leadership. He honed his skills at Weta Digital, shaping iconic cinematic moments, and picking up more than a few coffee habits along the way. Nowadays, he’s all about refining workflows, empowering his team to bring bold ideas to life, and tinkering with Head Mounted Cameras that occasionally resemble futuristic headgear. Focused yet open-minded, Sigtor fosters an environment where fresh perspectives thrive, while streamlined processes keep everyone on track. Whether he’s debugging a face scanner or brainstorming the next big innovation, he brings contagious enthusiasm to every project. In short, Sigtor’s hands-on approach and supportive energy ensure each production runs smoothly from start to finish.
Ida Kidal
Office Manager
Ida is the heart of Motion Grinder, bringing a florist’s precision and a warm spirit to every aspect of the studio. After working her magic in The Hobbit’s Greens Department, she managed operations at Pixel Grinder (later Goodbye Kansas Studios) before stepping into her vital role here. Ida’s all about balancing creative chaos with calm oversight—she keeps the daily details in check while nurturing a positive atmosphere for everyone involved. Her passion for wellness also means you might find a healthy snack alongside your project notes. By blending organizational savvy with genuine care, Ida ensures the Motion Grinder family stays motivated, focused, and supported, proving that dedication and well-being can go hand in hand.
Frida Nilsson
Senior Animator
Frida is our go-to Senior Body Animator, Mocap Operator, and HMC specialist, celebrated for her ability to make characters move in ways that feel both dynamic and natural. She began her journey at Starbreeze in 2009, went on to refine her craft at MachineGames, and eventually led animation teams at Goodbye Kansas Studios. Armed with deep MotionBuilder expertise, she tackles complex challenges while keeping the energy light—sometimes cracking a small joke even when fine-tuning the trickiest moves. Frida’s hands-on style and generous mentorship help others grow, ensuring each pose or sequence resonates on-screen. Her passion, combined with a down-to-earth attitude, makes her an invaluable force behind Motion Grinder’s high-caliber animation work.
Nils Lerin
Senior Pipeline Developer
Nils, with his humble nature and sharp technical acumen, tackles complex challenges with a smile that never fades, even in daunting situations. A co-founder of the original Pixel Grinder, he was instrumental in carving out its niche in digital humans for AAA games, laying the groundwork for what would become the famed Digital Humans division at Goodbye Kansas Studios. Under his guidance, Pixel Grinder's legacy of exceptional quality and innovative techniques thrived. Nils’s rare blend of programming prowess, artistic insight, and deep anatomy knowledge bridges the gap between the visual and the technical. Now, he’s using that expertise to develop our advanced facial animation pipeline, boosting productivity and marking a bold departure from outdated methods. By merging art and code seamlessly, Nils elevates both our projects and the entire field of digital human creation.
Adrina Wennström
Senior Modeler
Adrina is a multi-talented 3D Graphic Artist who began her journey at Future Games in Stockholm between 2015 and 2017, quickly discovering a passion for digital artistry that opened doors across the entertainment industry. Her proficiency spans ZBrush, texturing, Unreal, and photogrammetry, all underpinned by the solid foundation she built at Future Games. What truly sets Adrina apart is her rare blend of artistic vision and technical acumen. This fusion, coupled with her unwavering attention to detail, makes her indispensable in every facet of our work—from designing intricate HMC hardware components to tackling the technical complexities of our facial animation pipeline. By seamlessly blending art and technology, Adrina elevates quality and precision throughout our projects, ensuring that we consistently deliver excellence in all that we do.
Wilma Wiiand
Junior Animator
We first welcomed Wilma as an Animation Intern in February 2024 while she was still a student at Futuregames, and it became clear almost immediately that she had the dedication and sharp eye needed to excel in animation. Over the next eight months, she dove into our mocap pipeline, from setting up cameras to polishing facial and body animations in Unreal Engine and Maya. By September 2024, we knew we had to make her our Junior Animator. Wilma’s curiosity and lightning-fast learning curve drive her constant growth, while her unwavering enthusiasm lifts the entire team. She may be new in the industry, but she’s already proving that talent, focus, and the perfect mix of creative energy and determination make all the difference.
Fredrik Wallin
Senior Software Developer
Fredrik is our resident IT virtuoso, bringing years of hands-on experience in everything from embedded software to network protocols like TCP/IP. His meticulous approach has guided him to mastermind and engineer the control software for our HMCs, a rock-solid platform that stands firm even when our mocap shoots get a bit wild. He also spearheaded the onboard recording software, ensuring every take is captured without a hitch, while others might run from a flickering error message, Fredrik calmly hunts it down. Thanks to his unwavering attention to detail, both operators and clients can trust our process to run flawlessly. Whether he’s wrangling glitchy code or optimizing new features, Fredrik’s commitment to quality never wavers. With him at the helm, our technical backbone remains stable, efficient, and ready for anything.
MOTION GRINDER · SINCE 2013
OUR STORY
A shared obsession with the details that make a digital character feel human.
2013A studio in motion
Motion Grinder began in January 2013, when Sigtor Kildal started a small studio focused on motion capture and body animation.
2014Better, together
A year later, he joined forces with Jonas Törnqvist and Nils Lerin to found Pixel Grinder, their first company together, built around a shared obsession: making digital humans as convincing as possible.
At Pixel Grinder, the team brought modeling, rigging and animation under one roof, so every detail could be considered from the first scan to the final performance. Artists and developers worked side by side, learning from each other and constantly finding something to improve.
That curiosity also took the Pixel Grinder team into building hardware, developing several generations of scanners that culminated in dedicated face and body scanning systems.
2017A lasting foundation
In 2017, Pixel Grinder joined three other companies to form Goodbye Kansas Studios. The Pixel Grinder team brought the expertise, technology and close collaboration between modeling, rigging and animation that helped lay the foundations of its digital human work.
That contribution remains tangible today: the face and body scanners the Pixel Grinder team designed and built, along with the HMC setups the team introduced, are still used in production there. We’re proud that the Pixel Grinder team built something that continues to help artists bring digital humans to life.
2020A new chapter
2020 marked a new chapter for Motion Grinder. Building on its beginnings in 2013, the studio focused on close collaboration with clients and hands-on work in animation and technology.
TodayStill building
Today, familiar faces and new talent share the same curiosity that brought us together in the first place. We’re still building, still refining, and still chasing the small details that make a digital character feel human.