Patecreme

Today’s rendez-vous is mister Tomin Vladimir, motion and graphic designer from Russia.

What striked me when I discovered Space-Jump is the amount of jobs he made in a few months, and the huge energy he demonstrates through lightspeed growing artistic and technical skills.  Birth of a star from Russia, live from Patecreme.

1/Vladimir, please give us a quick description of yourself.

Story :
Hi, my name is Tomin Vladimir, but Internet knows me as Myaka. I’m 26, I have diploma of IT specialist, but those 5 IT years was so hard I basically hate computers so after I finished my education I decided to go different way.
I had a dream: making motion graphics. So I came to local TV station and told them what I want. They took me in, but of course first time I was working for nothing because I had to learn from almost zero. In a few months I handled After Effects well enough to make intro for one of sport programs. In 1 year I became head designer, and after 2 years of work here I leave for world of advert in peppers studio. So now I have 4.5 years of Motion Graphics experience.

Description :
I’m 26, pretty short young man, obsessed with design. . See? Madness in those eyes? No I’m just kidding; I’m not like that in real life.

Love :
I love to sing, had a band once, was making music myself, love to watch tv series, cinema addicted, don’t mind of kicking some asses via my xbox360, love Dance Dance Revolution,
traveling, boxing, programming, spending a lot of time with my girlfriend, my cat, friends, sketching, skateboard (don’t know if I’ll return to it someday thou), rock concerts,
photography (with my old cannon powershot pro), writing stories and BIG letters, well a lot of things you know.

Hate :
When people actions are dictated by their inferiority complex.
Computer hang-ups and all kind of tech malfunctions.
Accidentally dropping food on floor or table. HAAATE it! Really!
When its too hot (+35 C and I’m literally dieing)

Achievements :
Senior member of slashTHREE, worked for some big brands including Reebok and Adidas
(their local representatives), featured at dA, behance, motionographer, designcollector,
designflawr and few other places. My video works was featured at vimeo, behance, at Munich’s GOV.
Worked for some well known musicians as well (Blindone, ELPA music records, Zamza).

2/What techniques are you using ?
Traditionnal / digital / mixed media ?

I personally like to make photomanipulations :

, but because I have to listen what people are saying, I’m using mixed media mostly :

because this is what “stands me out of crowd”. That’s what she said lol! And here is new style I’m trying to develop last few weeks :

No pencil shadowing here, only hand-drawn outline. After outline is created, all texturing and shadowing performed in Photoshop. I really like results of this technique so far.

3/What’s your typical work process?

I start with idea. Main problem is to throw away all crap and choose something really good. After that I’m drawing main elements with pencil, scanning my drawing and integrate them with photos or
other digital design elements.
Best way to see my process is go to www.myaki.ru See those breakdowns? Download any of them (start with K.O.) and you will see all described above. Btw, I updating this section on every Friday so check back soon!

Good piece takes a week. Medicore pieces can be done in 1-2 days.

4/Your major influences/people or companies your like?

1.5 years ago I saw pic of Hejz (it was nike air) and I was stunned by it. This pic was perfect.
After that I found http://www.graphic-exchange.com and after I saw what people doing here I decided to try doing digital art myself.
After half year of photoshopping I found depthcore’s workshop section. Posted pics here, hearing people comments,
tried to improve my work. After dC’s workshop was closed I found www.slashthree.com and applied here as artist.
They took me in and since that time I improved a lot. SlashTHREE is my internet home now.

As for motion graphics, my first love was Shilo Design, and now I like to get motion inspiration from motionographer.com

5/Tell us about the Space-jump project

Space-jump.com is my on-line portfolio. My first portfolio was www.myaki.ru , but my friend Chris Rivera gave me advice to make something more serious. So I decided to move to “COM” domain space and start something new here, and keep myaki as blog. Really not much to say here… Spacejump up for less than 2 months now, but already was featured several times all over internet, including designcollector.ru and motionographer.com .
LOL most people thinks space-jump.com is some sort of art community. No, only my works are here. You can do a lot for 1.5 years, believe me!
And about name of site, I love Battlestar Galactica and I love how “space jump” sounds, and domain was free at moment so there were no second guesses here.

6/The way you see the design world from Russia….
Russia is mother country of constructivism, which influenced Bauhaus itself. Is that important for modern designers like you?

There are not much places in Russia with good teaching of design so most people here are self-taught persons.
As for constructivism, there are a lot more native things besides of that (take our folk decor elements for example, or incredible Russian painters), but most of those are ignored by Russian designers but very well used by foreign colleagues.
You see, Russian people are VERY talented but we forced to invent bicycle too often and it drags us back, because we almost have NO DESIGN CULTURE nowdays, however, there are some really brightly shiny gems in world of Russian design (http://www.zhestkov.com) but sadly it’s not a law, it’s more like exception.

Where you live doesn’t really matter if you love what you’re doing. And I also know that sooner or later Russian design will arise, thanks to big cities and internet.

Thanks Vladimir. For sure the new generation of Russian designers is arising with such Space-Jumpers !

Photos credits : all photos and illustrations by Tomin Vladimir
Interview published by Patecreme - February 2009