Till Nowak is a 28 year old digital artist, designer and filmmaker from Germany. His work has been exhibited in hundreds of international film festivals, featured at SIGGRAPH 2006 and 2007 and was awarded with more than 35 first prizes, for example in Annecy or at the AFI Fest Hollywood. The shortfilm called “Delivery”, a kind of a science fiction fairy tale, that was created as his graduation work, changed his life having brought him fame and popularity.
Currently Till is working for creative agencies, film productions, and independent projects. Besides his studio work Till has given lectures about his workflows in international events, and worked as jury member in various film festivals. Undoubtedly, he is a gifted person with huge potential! but let him personally tell about himself.
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Please, tell about yourself, your background and education. How did you get into computer graphics?
I was born in 1980, my parents are artists, too, and so I was always surrounded by art and creativity. As a child I had the chance to play a lot with my fathers videocamera and super8 cameras and do little stop motion films. My mother bought me my first computer when I was 12. The mix of art, film and my PC gave me so many possibilities and thrilled me in so many ways that I began to work professionally very early. When I was 19 I founded my studio “frameboX”. I started as my own boss and I always wanted it to stay that way, so I never worked in another company, not even for one day and not even as an intern. First I did a lot of classical print and web design, but over the years I specialized in computer generated images and animations. Besides my independent artworks and the jobs for TV and creative agencies, I was travelling around the world during the past three years, mainly because of film festival events in which I participated with my shortfilm “Delivery”.
“Can’t Smile without You” by Till Nowak.
You studied media design at the University of Applied Sciences. What knowledge did you obtain there?
While I was already working professionally as a kind of small production company for many clients and TV stations, I decided to study “media design” in my home town Mainz. It was a really difficult time to keep my business running and be present at the university. I didn’t sleep much and I am happy that this double life is over. From the technical side I wouldn’t have needed it, but it gave me a completely new horizon about the artistic side of media and cinema – so it was worth it.
“The Shaved Bumblebee” by Till Nowak.
As we know, in 2005 you graduated the University with the shortfilm “DELIVERY”. What is this film about? What idea does it convey?
“Delivery” is kind of a science fiction fairy tale, about an old man who lives next to a big, dark factory and cares about a little flower, perhaps the last flower on earth. One day he receives a mysterious package, nobody knows where it came from. This package contains a magic portal which gives him the power to change his environment as if he was God. Now he has to decide how to use this power. My goal was to create a very dense visual and musical composition. It has some philosophical science fiction content, but also an environmental message. It is a utopic story about the importance of every humans individual decision on how to deal with environmental problems.
“Delivery” still by Till Nowak.
I produced this shortfilm as my graduation work when I was studying parallel to my professional job. I didn’t expect this little film to change my life, but finally it all went really crazy. First I entered it only into some small festivals and didn`t have big plans with it, I just thought that one or two festivals would be nice to show the film and meet some people. Then the film won awards in the first three festivals and I recognized that there was much more potential. From this point I started to enter the film into many festivals all over the world and an exciting journey for me began. Over three years I travelled to Australia, Korea, USA, Spain, and many other countries and until now the film was screened in more than 200 festivals, is sold to TV stations in some countries and won more than 35 awards. My horizon completely changed, I met many great people, got many interesting offers and it gave me the most important impulse: To change my focus from commercial advertising work to independent art and cinema. Most recently I released a DVD with the shortfilm, a documentary about my work and many special features which you can buy directly on my website www.framebox.com
Do you usually show your works to anybody before posting them on the Internet? Who is your main critic?
Yes, I show my works usually to 5-10 friends, who are often also designers, and there I get usually some really important feedback which I then evaluate and often include. Listening to feedback is extremely important, but you also need the strength to stay true to your concept, which means that it is not always the right way to fulfil your critiques wishes if you are sure about certain decisions.
You actively take part in many cultural events and exhibitions. You even tried yourself as a jury member (Dresden Film Festival, Sehsuechte Film Festival, Pontault-Combault Film Festival, France and Munich International Festival of Film Schools). What are the criteria you use for estimating the competitive works? What things do you usually take into account first: creativity or technical execution?
Creativity is more important, but if the technical execution is bad enough to distract from the good content then it doesn’t help either. But usually the mistake is to have something technically brilliant with a flat content. There are many factors like uniqueness, originality, surprise, technical execution, thematical relevance, it’s difficult to put this into certain rules.
“Android” by Till Nowak.
Where do you find ideas for your works? What inspires you?
Most of my inspiration comes from films, but also from absorbing everything which is unusual and funny in a twisted way, usually just products, stories, art or anything else in my environment. As a child I was not allowed to watch a lot of TV, but somehow I got the chance to watch some films including “Dune”, “Alien” and “Star Wars”. Through my parents – they are both artists – I came in touch with the films of Jacques Tati, Charles Chaplin and a lot of classical art. This mixture must have had a strong influence on my own style. I see myself still as a beginner learning and developing my own style, but there are elements that you can find in most of my works: I like to work with twilight and indirect light; I care a lot about precision and tension in the two-dimensional composition of the images elements. I like a dusty feeling instead of a clean cartoon look. I like monochromatic color schemes instead of many colors. And to speak about the content: most of my works are mixing and twisting the common dimensions and relations between objects, sometimes combined with a subtle humor and a bit of science fiction romantic.
In my work you can find similarities to the painters of romanticism and besides that I was always fascinated by the works of artists like M.C. Escher, H.R. Giger, Erwin Wurm, David La Chapelle as well as filmmakers like David Fincher, Jean Pierre Jeunet or Terry Gilliam. They are all masters of creating a perfectly thrilling experience and at the same time create their own totally believable world. The audience has to completely dive into this world and forget to doubt its existence. During the last 10 years I tried out almost every field of digital creativity, like design, music, programming, photography – and finally filmmaking and animation brings it all together, which makes it for me personally the most exciting level of creating art.
Concept Car by Till Nowak.
Have you ever been tired of your work, or on the contrary, is computer graphics a rest for you?
I have never been tired of working with visual creativity, but sometimes I have been tired of working for advertising projects. The fascination of computer graphics is a combination of many aspects: It’s the freedom to create whatever I have in mind, it’s the endless possibilities where your imagination is the only limit, it’s the efficiency to produce huge scenes with nothing than a little computer and it’s the non-linearity and flexibility which makes it possible to begin without knowing where it will lead you to. It’s like a never boring toy and it combines form, motion, light, timing and much more in a single medium. Within the field of visual arts there are so many possibilities that it will probably never feel tired of it. My work as an artist and illustrator becomes a rest when I have enough time to play around and work on my own ideas, it is not a rest if a client is chasing me with a deadline…
“Drop” by Till Nowak.
You are an award winning artist. How did all these awards change your life?
Awards of course drag a lot of attention from people to my work. It was very important for me to visit all of these film festivals, because real relationships and friendships started there, sometimes just by drinking a beer together after the screening or being in the same hotel as someone else. For example Aarman animations hired me as a concept artist after meeting them in a Cafe during the animation festival in Annecy, and there are many more examples of really important relationships which started at film festivals. Not every festival or award is important, sometimes it’s just a piece of paper and nothing ever happens with it, but in many cases it was. So I can just encourage everybody to enter your best work to contests and festivals, travel to the events, show your work and meet people, it really works!
What your life would be like without computer graphics?
I could eventually have become a scientist, because I was crazy about physics, space, etc. as a child, but more likely I would have become a musician. I actually had produced a record and some other releases before I was 20, and if you dig really deep in my website you can still find some of my old electronic music productions. But one day I totally switched to the visual side and gave up my audio studio.
“Torpedo” by Till Nowak.
What advice would you suggest to our audience and beginning CG artists? What are the typical mistakes to avoid while producing a 3D image?
I would like to point out how important improvisation and visual cheating is to me, because it leads to efficiency, like a direct brain-to-paper-connection. I think it’s very important to find your own solutions and invent your own workflows or techniques instead of using too many specialized plugins or reading in the manual for every individual solution. My project files sometimes look messy and sometimes I use methods which are strange from a professional point of view, but I just find it very efficient to use the most simple and most direct solution and head directly towards a final result without any complex tools, even if I lose a bit of technical perfection with it. In my own experience the artistic vision survives easier if you just look for cheaty workarounds instead of using complex solutions. To better explain this attitude you can try my video tutorial.
When I talk to young artists and students I sometimes have the feeling that the most typical mistake to drown in self critiques. Many young artists think their work is not good enough so they feel blocked by doubting themselves, never finish a piece and don’t get forward. In my opinion this is often a result of admiring and studying the work of other artists too much instead of working on their own style. This is why I don’t read many art books or visit many exhibitions, I often feel that it’s better for my output if I don’t absorb too much of other peoples work.
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Thank you, Till, for a great interview. We wish you success and prosperity!
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