My name is Måns. I'm a creative director living in NYC. I have been working in motion design and animation since 2001. It has all been about combining design, animation, and storytelling in various ways, such as music videos, broadcast design, feature films, documentaries, PSAs, and kids' TV. My work has won several international awards, including Gold and Silver at Promax/BDA. Most recently, I worked as showrunner and director on a TV show that I created called Hey Fuzzy Yellow, a STEAM kids' series now airing internationally. I'm really inspired by this new wave of natural-language user interfaces. Feels like the stuff on the horizon will be able to shift animation toward creativity and away from tedium in a big way. Hoping the post-bubble AI era will have ethics frameworks. I love the art + science combo.
My current project in development is called Muy. It's a kids' property that's all about early learning through movement and drum machine music. Kids + drum grooves is the best combination in the world. I'm working toward a final format that will be a TV show paired with a toy and apparel line.
The main characters are two breakdancers called MHz (a tape recorder) and LeWow (an owl). They love adventures, dance battles and eating snacks.
I'm currently getting great results out of the Nano Banana and Seedance combo. Much quicker results than Lora training, and much better character adherence.
To date, my test animations have generated 28,000 followers on YouTube.
Watch a clip here:
Muy Watercolor is an app I made using Godot and Claude. It's a chillout coloring book app for iOS and iPadOS. It has a very satisfying, realistic watercolor effect and 14 pages of drawings to color.
Available on the App Store now!
Below is an interactive drum machine I created using Claude Code. It generates the drum sounds using realtime FM synthesis. The sequencer is programmable and is designed to be accessible to kids. Go hard on the New Kit and New Beat buttons for some amazing results!
My 2017 animated short "Hey Fuzzy Yellow" was developed into a full STEAM series for preschoolers in collaboration with Doobry and Toon2Tango, designed around Reggio-Emilia principles of curiosity-led learning — the idea that you design conditions for discovery rather than deliver content at children. I served as showrunner and director, overseeing script, design and animation departments, as well as composing the theme song and other music components. The €4M, 52 × 11 minute production was truly international: scripts by Curiosity Ink Media (US), storyboarding and design by Treehouse Republic (Ireland), sound by Will Productions (France), and animation by Hotel Hungaria (Belgium). Production wrapped in 2025, and the show is currently airing in Latin America, Ireland, Iceland, and Hong Kong.
Watch the pilot here:
I ran a toy company called Famous OTO that made premium cardboard playhouses for kids — 100% recyclable and manufactured in the USA. The philosophy was simple: set the scene and get out of the way. Design something vivid enough to spark the imagination, then let the child take over. The prints were designed by me and printed in Pennsylvania using top-quality lithographic techniques. The line included two full-size models, an ice cream truck and a taco truck, plus a cat-sized range featuring a miniature ice cream truck and a Brooklyn brownstone complete with a tiny French restaurant. The products were featured in New York Magazine and Crain's Business, and won an Award of Excellence from Communication Arts.
Pistachios was the director name I used from 2003 to 2016, combining experimental 2D, 3D, and mixed-media animation. I was represented by Blacklist in NYC and worked with some of the world's leading agencies and brands across broadcast, digital, and branded content. My work won several international awards, including Gold and Silver at Promax/BDA.
Watch the showreel here:
I got started in motion graphics working at StyleWar in Stockholm, as director / 3d designer. I created show titles for MTV and worked on music videos for the Hives, Moby, the Rolling Stones and others.
I have a small fashion label together with my wife, Adette C. Contreras. We make statement jumpsuits with loud prints, sewn in NYC's fashion district. Foreign Tongues is also a band but we haven't finished any songs yet!
Check it out here - www.foreigntongues.com
How You Say is a social platform for discovering and sharing products that you like. It is intentionally barebones, avoiding all the things that can make social networks so noisy and depressing. No influencers, no branded content, no tracking, no ads. Just a zen feed of stuff you might like, powered by a personalized weighted recommendation engine.
Try it out! www.howyousay.co/demo
I have released a number of disco 12"s under the names Bogdan Irkük a.k.a. BULGARI and Waldemar Schwartz. Labels include Rollerboys, Soul Jazz, Golf Channel, Internasjonal, Permanent Vacation.
See the full discography on Discogs.