Motorica raises $5.4M to make game animation 200x faster with AI

Motorica has emerged from stealth with €5 million ($5.4 million) in seed funding to replace traditional motion capture with generative AI for character animation in video games. The Stockholm-based startup’s technology promises to reduce animation costs by over 90% while accelerating workflows up to 200 times faster than conventional mocap pipelines, potentially transforming how studios approach one of game development’s most expensive bottlenecks.

The big picture: Motion capture represents a massive production challenge for AAA game studios, with animation alone accounting for 10-30% of total budgets and requiring millions of dollars for single projects like Red Dead Redemption 2, which used over 300,000 unique animations.

How it works: Motorica’s “motion synthesis” platform uses a transformer-based AI model trained on thousands of hours of proprietary motion capture data.

• The system generates high-quality character animation at scale without requiring traditional studio time or extensive data cleanup.
• Studios can animate hundreds of characters with the same resources previously needed for one.
• The platform maintains precise control over speed, acceleration, and expressive nuance that animators require.

In plain English: Think of traditional motion capture like hiring actors to perform every movement in a recording studio, then spending weeks cleaning up the data—expensive and time-consuming. Motorica’s AI has already learned from thousands of hours of these recordings and can now generate new, realistic character movements on demand, like having a virtual stunt double that never gets tired.

What they’re saying: CEO Willem Demmers positions the technology as augmentative rather than disruptive to creative workflows.

• “Studios today spend millions creating realistic animation—and still often only fully animate one character,” Demmers said. “With our tech, they can animate a hundred.”
• “We’re not replacing animators or actors,” he emphasized. “We’re replacing their chores.”
• Veteran animator Maxi Keller, whose credits include The Last of Us Part II and Call of Duty: WWII, called Motorica “the best tool out there for locomotion and motion matching.”

Who’s involved: The founding team combines deep industry expertise with cutting-edge AI research.

• Demmers, a serial founder in creative tech, partnered with generative AI researcher Gustav Henter and mocap veteran Simon Alexanderson.
• Angular Ventures led the funding round, with participation from Luminar Ventures and gaming industry angels including founders of Swedish studios Avalon and Fatshark.

Why this matters: Traditional animation workflows allocate 70% of time to technical tasks like keyframing and filler cycles, leaving little room for creative work.

• Motorica flips this ratio, allowing artists to focus on narrative, character development, and creative polish.
• The technology addresses a fundamental scalability problem as games become increasingly complex and expensive to produce.

What’s next: The 21-employee company, with over half being AI researchers, plans rapid expansion with several key priorities.

• Developing SDKs for deeper game engine integration.
• Creating new datasets for stylized and non-humanoid motion.
• Forming strategic partnerships with virtual production studios and simulation platforms.