Creativity and games have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Thanks to my mother, who was a very good painter, the smell of oil paint is deeply connected to my childhood. I started drawing at an early age and during my rather boring school years — I really wasn’t a particularly good student — I often drifted off into my own world.

I started filling my notebooks with drawings until there was barely any empty space left. At some point I began connecting the individual drawings and shapes with each other, and that slowly turned into strange new creatures and forms. That’s how I discovered surrealism for myself — something I grew to love and still enjoy exploring today.

After school, I first went in a completely different direction and started an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering. For three years I worked with metal, construction and technical processes. I was especially good at CAD, welding and soldering. But maths was never my strong point, and all the formulas, standards and very rigid precision of the field didn’t suit me particularly well, so in the end I didn’t complete the final qualification.

I didn’t let that discourage me, because shortly afterwards I heard about a ceramics school where I could finally work in a more creative and artistic way.

There I learned pretty much everything the field had to offer: pottery, painting, sculpture, design and much more. For the first time I could really experiment creatively, and it was also where I started developing my own surreal style more seriously.

Photography has also been one of my hobbies since that time.

After finishing ceramics school, a small lifelong dream suddenly seemed to come true: I finally got to study this mysterious thing called “Game Design”.

Besides drawing, gaming had always been my other big passion. What fascinated me most wasn’t only playing games, but changing them and building my own levels.

That started surprisingly early. I couldn’t even read yet and was still in kindergarten when I created my first levels in Battle City, a simple game where two tanks hunted each other — and I suddenly realised that by rearranging the different tiles, I could change the entire flow of the game.

Later, through the many level editors that came with different games, I got into Unreal Engine fairly early and quickly learned to love it.

Highly motivated, I eventually started studying Game Art & 3D Animation at SAE Institute in Munich. There I could finally focus on the things I actually enjoyed. I became especially interested in unusual machinery, steampunk, grunge, and in general objects and worlds that felt like they had their own story.

During my studies I was also able to combine my interest in photography with my 3D work. My thesis focused on texture photography and on using photographic material specifically for digital surfaces and 3D assets.

During this time I also met Tarek Samaan and Philipp Hellmann, who were my lecturers back then and would later become my employers.

After graduating, I stayed at SAE for another two years as a supervisor. During that time I also came into closer contact with other departments such as Music, Film and VFX. Since then, I’ve occasionally helped out on smaller film projects — either directly on set or by creating 3D content and other visual elements for the production.

At the same time, I started entering the rather tough games and 3D industry as a freelancer.

After several projects for Pipedream Media, a company founded by my former lecturers, I was eventually offered a full-time position. I’ve been working there ever since as a 3D and Texture Artist.

Today the company is called mld digits. My work mainly involves taking CAD data of customer products and preparing it for real-time applications — turning technical construction data into optimised 3D assets for interactive and game-like experiences.

Looking back, I’m pretty happy that I ended up exactly where I am today. Especially because the gaming industry is such a competitive field, I appreciate that many of my earlier paths finally come together here: CAD from mechanical engineering, art and design from ceramics school, and level design and 3D from my studies.

In the end, I took the parts from each of those stages that suited me best — and today I can actually combine them.

What comes next? I’ll see where it takes me.