Mattias Lindberg and his alter ego Fake Pilot.

Hello! My name is Mattias Lindberg. I'm a Senior Motion Designer from Stockholm, Sweden. Graduated from Lost Boys school of Visual Effects in Montréal, Canada. Currently working for Electronic Arts (EA).

”Found a MIG-29 Russian fighter pilot helmet and made it into my alter ego.”

Background

When I was 17, I started a gaming clan site for Blizzard's Diablo back in 1997 with Netscape Composer. Tons of ugly GIF animations of Alien xenomorphs. Web design didn't really interest me before seeing Gabocorp, a website made entirely in Macromedia Flash.

–"No one is doing this! It's creative and all you need is a PC and time. I'm gonna become the best in the world at doing flash animation!"

I did an introductory Internet course while working with Flash during nights and free time.

My first flash website was found by Sweden's largest newspaper - Aftonbladet. An IT journalist's article helped land several job interviews.

Moved to Stockholm for my first job as a web designer at Corpguide. I didn't know anyone so I was always working late on some flash animation. If not for myself, then for my employer. They sparred my interest and found my first big flash client: The Spy Bar. I was 19 years old, got a VIP card to the hippest night club in Sweden at that time and worked with what I loved the most.

The Internet bubble burst, the company I worked for crashed and everyone got fired. This was in 2001. For me, my real journey started with Fake Pilot. I found and purchased a MIG-29 Russian fighter pilot helmet and made it into my alter ego. I started my own company, landed a 1 million SEK commercial through the owner of The Spy Bar for DUX beds.

An agent living in Miami found me, Yves Darbouze, he hocked me up with clients like Puff Daddy and Ruff Ryders. The second time I worked for Puff Daddy, they told me I could use music from Bad Boy Recordings. I didn't like it so I scratched it up and mixed it myself. The work for Puff Daddy got ripped-off and used for Levi's Jeans in China and another job was ripped off by Nokia in Italy. Strange how the world worked back then, at one time we made a really cool site design in blue for Ruff Ryders, they called back on Skype and yelled:
–"Are you fucking crazy?! Blue is the Crips color, we're the Bloods. Someone could get shot for this shit!"

Got a green card and was about to move to Miami, when Yves froze my checks and ended up in prison, the police found a bag of cocaine in his house, think he was going to spend 30 years in prison for it. My money was sent to his wife and kid.

Continued working with two of his former colleagues. Worked for Diddy and later also Beyonce, Saatchi & Saatchi. The drama continued when Yves was released 3 years later, apparently, evidence showed it was his neighbors cocaine! There was a big fight between Yves and the former colleagues about client theft etc.

We did a website for Robyn in our office above McDonalds. I thought it was cool of her to give me a lift home in her Porsche. Her manager brought me along to watch Prince live.

Started freelancing with North Kingdom, was sitting in their office in old town of Stockholm for several years. Coke M5, Nicorette, etc. Never moved to USA, but visited NYC twice.

I spent money mostly on traveling, computers and having fun. Started reading and questioning everything. Politics, religion, money, power. I started to question my life, tattooed "Question Everything" on my chest. Did a bucket list. Jumped from an airplane, I got some other guy to jump solo with my pilot helmet. I scuba dived. Bungy jumped. Climbed a volcano in Bolivia. My relationship with girls never lasted more than a couple of months. Was contacted by two Japanese agents working from Los Angeles. They travelled to my office and paid a trip for me to do a presentation in Tokyo. Which I did with helmet on in Japanese. Also did a presentation at OFFF in Portugal, screaming out "I love Portugal", 3.000 people screaming back. Closest I felt to being a superstar.

Received my hometown's creativity scholarship, most creative person from Trollhättan of 2007. My mom who worked for the city, saw that sign every day in the elevator to her office floor.


Tried to change the world

After getting back from Japan, I was faced with two opportunities. Either move to Tokyo and start working with Asian clients. Or to start working with a project called Menyou, that my colleague and friend Andreas Lindholm already had started working on.

I thought to myself. If a simple kid from Trollhättan could reach this far, maybe it's possible to change the world as well?

Me and my colleague started working three months in Chile, where his wife owned some land. We had been assigned to design a concept and business idea. What if everyone around the world, could send small or large amounts of money, just as easy as giving a Facebook like? And people could share other peoples content and make a buck for themselves too. What if parts of the Internet was connected to small amounts of cash, making a sustainable independent Digital Fair Trade? Making the Internet into a place not only for freedom of information, but also economic freedom for the people. If only we had used Bitcoin a few years after we started... (check out Nostr and its zap functionality).

No longer doing flash animation, but UI design, strategy meetings, presentation talks with potential investors and wealthy millionaires. A lot of things that happened there could make it into a book or documentary. Like the meeting inside the mental sickness hospital in London with a possibly dangerous mythomaniac investor.

Having a Swedish House Mafia member over and congratulating my work, but too busy to talk, was playing StarCraft 2 with my co-workers.

The retired white bearded marine officer, somehow involved in the Russian submarine scandal, that turned out to be minks on the radar. The forest owning priest that fell asleep during one of my one-on-one presentations – but still invested. Calling Björn from ABBA from the phone book and him actually picking up. When explaining our idea in a video tutorial for him, later finding another company he invested in doing the exact same thing, even stole a couple of our ideas.

The fortune telling prophetess of rich men doing business in Qatar. The supporting widow of the poisoned inventor of cars that ran on water. The man who's life meaning was searching power and managed to walk right into the white house.

A former Ericsson executive told the story about how they installed phone line surveillance on Iraq's populace for Saddam Hussein.

Enough strange things to make someone insane and I think at some point it actually did. Changing the world was a lot more difficult than I could have ever imagined!

After 5 years with Menyou, I told them I needed to go on a break, go back to freelancing. Wanted to do motion graphics again. The company eventually crashed, Think the main founder is still out there somewhere working on it...


Flash is dead. Long live Flash.

When I got back, I had to start over. Flash, my main tool no longer was asked for as much, Apple put the needle in the coffin by not allowing the plugin on iPhones and iPads. Made most companies go over to HTML5 and video. So I started learning 3D. But there was tons of competition now and I was 5 years behind. That and the breakup got me a bit depressed! Started caring more about health and exercise.

Also started VJ:ing for clubs and festivals. The session with Broken Note was my favorite or F.O.O.L. at Dans Dakar.

Largest advertising agency in Sweden:
Forsman & Bodenfors


When you start asking what LinkedIn ever done for you, it magically hits your inbox: "Jobs you may be interested in". F&B Factory, Forsman & Bodenfors daughter company was looking for a Flash and After Effects animator.

If you don't know about Forsman & Bodenfors, I probably just have to say that they made that commercial for Volvo Trucks where Jean-Claude Van Damme does an epic split on two Volvo Trucks. 84 million views on Youtube?

I got the job and that employment helped me with the kind of things other people seek to find first – a home. Been traveling around and living in 2nd hand apartments for 15 years. This job helped me back on my feet. Got an apartment in Stockholm, Södermalm. Ironically – thinking Flash was dead, it saved me one last time. I was now producing Flash banners and digital screen to clients like Comviq, Tele2, H&M, Åhlens, Konsum, Statoil, PostNord. Over the course of two years, I did watch how Flash died and reborn as Animate CC and I became somewhat of an expert at producing HTML5 banners fast and with very high quality.


Another start-up called Intrasenze

When my close friend Andreas Lindholm co-founded a new security company – Intrasenze. I  managed to get a 6 months service leave from F&B, travelled to Spain and helped them out working with UI/UX for their iPhone app, produce a teaser trailer for their service, web sites and the start of a Kickstarter campaign.

Diet Doctor

Started working full time for Diet Doctor in August 2017 with inhouse mograph. I worked there for two years with courses, cooking videos and traveled around the world shooting live events. My interest in health got me on a side mission to become a keto expert. But, it didn't work for me. I found that it's more important to focus on protein and micronutrients, than on fat. Still, learned a lot and met a lot of interesting people. Also started with calisthenics, handstand, muscle-ups etc.

After some time, I started half time to work on a short movie via Patreon. Later, my boss gave me a deal to quit and follow my instincts.

Lost Boys

I got accepted to a 5 months FX Artist school in Canada, Montreal. A high intensity course, learning how the big studios work, presenting daily work progress and focusing on learning the most commonly used effects in movies and series today. Fire and destruction, but also electricity, particles, rain, debris, etc. I have been using Houdini for over 5 years now, but only for different projects here and there. My love have been growing with this software, because of the never ending learning process. It’s the most difficult to learn of all 3D software, but most powerful once you learn it.

After the school, I got an FX Artist job at Important Looking Pirates. An FX studio in Stockholm, Sweden. The Covid-19 pandemic had just started, but was able to start on a project. Three weeks later, the client moved my project forward and I lost the job. Back doing freelancing for various clients!

Electronic Arts (EA)

Starting a Motion Graphics Designer position, March 2021, for the marketing department at Electronic Arts, sitting at the DICE office. It's super fun to start working with the gaming industry.

In 2022, I switched over to the cinematic team but still doing 50% of work with the marketing department. Battlefield 2042 takes up most of my time, also did work for NFS and small stuff for other games.