Artist by nature.Engineer by training.Worldbuilder by profession.
And living proof that refusing to pick a side can become a surprisingly useful business model.
Many worlds.
A selection of brands, institutions, productions and creative partners I have worked for or with.
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The whole conceptual& visual journey.Without the departmental detour.
I understand the system. Then I build the image — across every discipline it needs.
Find the sentence everything else can follow.
Positioning, creative concepts, campaign ideas and visual systems — including the one sentence everyone can finally agree on.
Make the idea recognisable.
Brand identities, key visuals, editorial design, presentations and digital experiences — built to work beyond the first beautiful mock-up.
Build the world around it.
Concept art, modelling, materials, lighting, rendering and virtual environments. Making things that do not exist look suspiciously real.
Give it time, movement and a final frame.
Animation, VFX, compositing, motion design and final delivery — without handing the idea over at the interesting part.
I develop the visual core myself — from positioning and design to 3D, motion, VFX and the final frame. When a production needs more scale, I bring in trusted specialists — without ever outsourcing the idea. Not because every project should be a one-woman show, but because ideas grow stronger when strategy, image and execution share the same direction.
There was exactly one app back then. It was called Outside.
I grew up on a clearing in the mountains of southern Austria — three houses, and around them forest, meadows and cows. My sister and I spent entire days building cities from stones in the river. I drew constantly, invented stories and disappeared into worlds that were usually more interesting than whatever was happening in the classroom. One teacher called me Alice in Wonderland. She was not entirely wrong.
The urge to bring those images to life led me through charcoal, pastels, scratchboard, a novel and even classical singing — until digital art finally gave me the medium I had been looking for. In 3D and VR, gravity is optional, weather is negotiable and the camera is not bound to real life physics.
The funny part is that I also loved systems: mathematics, structure and the quiet satisfaction of something working exactly as it should. So engineering came first — software development and business organisation at the Higher Technical College in Villach — followed by a media technology and design study at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg / Upper Austria, then four years in an advertising agency.
In 2013 I founded Phoenix Digital Arts to keep both sides in the same room: logic and emotion, brand and film, pencil and render engine. Three feature films later, the experiment is still running. The river-stone cities simply have better lighting now — and considerably longer render times.
Tools change.The directionstays.
Cinema 4D, Octane, After Effects, a VR headset and whatever launched last Tuesday — the orchestra keeps growing. AI joined recently and, like every gifted new musician, still needs a conductor.
But an orchestra is not the music. Tools can render, simulate, generate and accelerate. They cannot decide what deserves to be made, what should remain silent or when the piece is finished.
So I keep the baton.
You are not hiring a software stack.
You are hiring judgement, experience and direction.
Some chaptersdeserve a closer look.
01MegalopolisTwo days with a living legend.+
Two shoot days on Megalopolis gave me the extraordinary privilege of working in an exceptionally small team along with Francis Ford Coppola — a true legend of cinema, and one of the filmmakers who fundamentally shaped the medium.
To experience him at work from such close range, not for a brief encounter but over two full days, was something I felt deeply honoured to be part of. Watching him think, question, decide and direct revealed the precision, instinct and curiosity behind a lifetime of extraordinary filmmaking.
The experience continued beyond the set, with dinner together in a castle — a detail that still sounds slightly unreal. It was not simply a memorable production or an encounter with a famous director. It was the rare opportunity to witness a living legend at work, in a setting intimate enough to observe the person behind the body of work.
I was grateful, slightly overwhelmed — and determined to look entirely professional.
02Jama JurabaevThe fangirl moment turned into a collaboration with a legend.+
Taking Jama’s two-month Concept Art for Movies course was already a huge honour — and, admittedly, a serious fangirl moment. In those two months, he connected every step from the first idea to the final keyframe with more clarity, insight and creative wisdom than five hundred tutorials ever could.
Jama Jurabaev is an absolute legend in concept art, with work on The Mandalorian, Ready Player One, Star Wars, Aladdin, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — and, in my entirely objective professional opinion, a genuine concept-art rockstar.
I cannot recommend the course highly enough. Take a look at Jama’s Concept Art for Movies course.
After the course came one of the most exciting phone calls of my career: Jama asked whether I would join him and his team at Big Medium Small.
What a question. Who in this galaxy would say no? I felt a little like Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens when Han Solo offers her a job — except that I was attempting to sound calm, professional and entirely accustomed to receiving calls like this.
So I went from studying Jama’s creative process to developing brand identity and design for his company.
Apparently, studying the Force can lead to an invitation onto the ship.
03Zurich Film FestivalFrom render queue to Green Carpet.+
On 1 October 2025, Downhill Skiers premiered at the 21st Zurich Film Festival. For years I had helped build its visual world — from branding and graphic design to 2D/3D animation, VFX and the film website. Then the timelines, render queues and approval files disappeared, the lights went down and that world suddenly filled a cinema screen.
The Green Carpet carried its own sense of unreality. Four days earlier, Russell Crowe had crossed it to receive the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Now I was standing there with our film team, Marco Odermatt, Franjo von Allmen, Justin Murisier, Alexis Monney and some of the defining Swiss ski legends of our time. From Klagenfurt to Zurich, from pixels to premiere: outwardly composed, inwardly still saying WAIT, WHAT?View the Downhill Skiers project
04LightBox ExpoFirst live interview. Entire internet.+
Winning KitBash3D’s Post-Apocalypse contest led to my first-ever live interview — on KitBash3D’s GameDay stage at LightBox Expo Online 2020. The three-day virtual event brought together hundreds of artists and more than 200 presentations across animation, illustration and concept art; I joined Irena Šmitáková for a live conversation about the contest and the work behind it.
Before the screen went live, I was properly nervous: someone from a clearing in the mountains of southern Austria — the Gurktal, a valley so quiet it makes the rest of Carinthia look metropolitan — about to speak on an international stage for the very first time, and in English. Then the work took over. Still, there are moments when the distance between where you started and where you are becomes briefly visible. This was one of them. Apparently, panic is bilingual.
A few placesthe work has travelled.
Some projects have travelled further than I ever expected — to cinema screens, Prime Video, award lists, international interviews and one KitBash3D cover. It still feels special, and never something I take for granted.
If it’s hard to explain,it’s probably where I belong.
For brands, studios, agencies and founders who need one visual idea to survive strategy, design, 3D, motion and the final frame.