Marcus was drawn to video games since high school. He started working in Cinema 4D at the tender age of 15 and discovered an interest in animation and started rigging characters without knowing it is a career option.

He kickstarted his career in 3D by manually modelling assets for Google Maps while in school. His work involved modelling a few châteaus in France. After graduating from the Games Academy in Berlin, he interviewed for an animator’s role at CryTek. But things didn’t go as planned.

“Your animation is not that great,” said the interviewers. However, upon learning that he designed the skeleton of the characters that made them move (rigging) himself, he was offered the position of Technical Artist. He went on to work on Crysis 2 at the studio.

After the project, Marcus wanted to live abroad. He applied to a bunch of companies and eventually got into Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio, as a technical artist and moved to Malmö, Sweden. He worked on Tom Clancy’s The Division.

Early on, he worked on the animation pipeline of the game. He gradually rose to the ranks of the lead artist and managed a team of five people to build animation and tools. Marcus learned a ton about management and rigging at this post.

Once The Division was complete, Marcus moved to London to take up a new challenge: working on mobile games. He applied and got into Natural Motion but could work on the project for a very short time before he was approached by Sony for developing Blood & Truth, a VR game.

Marcus remembers his experience at Sony as super fun. But, wearing VR glasses for a full day really made him look forward to going home.

All this while, Marcus kept a professional ritual.

He would apply for a position at Blizzard Entertainment every year!

A ritual that he would practice religiously every year, no matter what.

In 2018, Christmas arrived early and his wish was granted.

He moved halfway across the world to Irvine, California to join Blizzard Entertainment.

He started working on an unannounced project that was ultimately cancelled. Later, he would go on to work on Overwatch 1, 2, and World of Warcraft.

However, fate had different plans!

The Pandemic happened and he moved back to Europe and joined DICE (EA Digital Illusions CE AB) in Stockholm to work on Battlefield 2042. Marcus had a short stint in his dream company.

The dark and gloomy Swedish days weren’t nearly as great as sunny California — as Marcus remembers.

So, as soon as a new opportunity opened up at Smilegate in Barcelona, he took it up. He worked as a principal technical animator for a year before he took a leap of faith.

After quitting the company, Marcus founded his own game dev studio: Monster Puppet Corporation.

The company focuses on technical art and animation and offers rigging, skinning, tools, and consultation services. Unlike other game dev studios, Monster Puppet isn’t working on actively developing a title.

Game development can get pretty complex. Marcus and his work in the industry is proof that one can stick to a single skill and make it big by mastering it over decades.

Stories from the people building games.