Telling stories in beautiful, exciting and immersive ways.
We are all mad here
Ing. Michaela Maria Wartbichler
ENGINEER BY TRAINING.
ARTIST BY NATURE.
And living proof of what happens when you refuse to pick either side.
Hi, I am Michaela.
I grew up on a clearing in the mountains of southern Austria — three houses, and around them nothing but forest, meadows and cows. There was exactly one app back then, and it was called OUTSIDE. I spent entire days in the woods inventing adventures and building cities of stones in the river with my sister. My teacher called me „Alice in Wonderland“ because I was permanently off in my own worlds, permanently drawing. Today I build those river-stone cities in 3D — for screens around the world.
The urge to bring all those images to life led me through one craft after another: charcoal, pastels, scratchboard, a novel, even classical singing — until I found digital art, and in 3D and VR the medium I’d been looking for all along. Creativity and engineering in the same room, with zero physical limits: many of my scenes are born in VR, and I can put the camera anywhere — inside a drop of serum, a millimetre above a ski edge at 140 km/h. Real reality is lovely, but it has terrible camera access.
On paper, the engineering came first: a degree in software engineering and business organisation — I loved the mathematics, but missed the magic. So I added media technology and design in Hagenberg, learned the craft of advertising for four years in an agency, and founded my studio Phoenix Digital Arts in 2013 — with big plans and, that first year, very little else.
The years since have been generous: three feature films — Downhill Skiers (cinema & Prime Video), Manaslu, Björn — Born to Windsurf — trusted me with every visual department. Campaigns for OMV and Audi. A Silver Dolphin at Cannes Corporate, a first prize at KitBash3D. And a phone call I’ll never forget: after his mentorship, Jama Jurabaev (The Mandalorian, Ready Player One) asked me to join his team at Big Medium Small — I felt a bit like Rey when Han Solo offers her the job. Training with David Ariew sharpened the craft further.
My favourite challenge? You walk in with a handful of notes and a big idea — and walk out with a brand world and an investor-ready pitch deck. I’ve done this for ventures ranging from Austria’s largest drone fleet to carbon nanotubes made from waste to luxury organic cosmetics (Chris Le Fay, which I co-founded). My current favourite chapter: FlareCatcher — the most exciting project of my career.
Winters, I teach visual effects and animation at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. The rest of the year, I do what I’ve done since the river-stone days: dreams, engineered.