Today Felix Blodig, product designer, 3D designer & 3D artist from Cologne, is available to answer my questions. Felix has been self-employed since 2020 and helps his customers with impressive 3D visualizations, animations and construction drawings. Felix looks back on 10 years+ experience in product design, spending most of his time working in agencies. Today, as an independent 3D artist, he is equipping more and more online shops and marketing websites with his high-quality 3D visualizations, bringing websites to a new level. I've been lucky enough to be able to implement several projects together with him.
Hi Felix, thanks for taking your time, would you like to briefly introduce yourself, tell us what you do and how you became a 3D designer?
Hi Marc, thanks for the invite. Yes, let's get started right away. As you mentioned at the beginning: my name is Felix and I am an independent 3D product designer - I create and design three-dimensional objects in the digital space. These can be animations, illustrations, or product visualizations.
As a trained master carpenter and trained product designer, exhibition construction has accompanied me for a large part of my professional career. I worked in various positions in various agencies, most recently as an art director in an agency here in Cologne. In exhibition construction in general and in this position in particular, I have always been able to combine good technical understanding and creativity.
As a result of the pandemic situation in 2020, in which the entire event industry suffered severely, I have decided to pursue my part-time self-employment full-time up to this point.
What appeals to you about creating 3D designs? What do you enjoy the most?
Perhaps influenced by my professional roots in craftsmanship, I like creating something and having a product in front of me at the end of the day. It's just a great feeling when you can implement your ideas and the wishes and expectations of your customers out of thin air in a way that doesn't feel like work for you. Maybe I can use the sentence I've heard too often here: Do what you love and you'll never have to work again.
What do you think are the most important qualities that a 3D designer should have?
A basic technical understanding is essential, especially when it comes to product design — as is an interest and understanding of materials and textures. In addition, a sense for colors and shapes as well as an eye for detail and aesthetics. In my case or for anyone who works directly on the customer: be able to listen. Not every customer request is always clearly formulated; you also have to read between the lines to implement the ideas satisfactorily. Also important: be able to think along, make your own decisions and implement them sensibly. No customer wants to be involved in every decision-making process — as long as the result is right in the end.
Are there industries that you prefer to work with?
That is also a point that I really enjoy my job: due to the range of my customers, I necessarily and with great interest deal with topics that I would probably not have had any contact with otherwise - or when did you last think about lubricant applications on a train?
Why are 3D designs so exciting, especially in web design?
Through the possibilities that a 3D object offers you compared to a static photo: Imagine that you want to market a product on your website - a photo of your product has served its purpose over the past 20 years. In the last 5 years, however, development has made huge strides forward, today we have the opportunity to display products as 360° images, which means that your potential customer can “touch” the product on your website and view it from all sides. Or take AR (augmented reality), animations of your product or the fact that you can display all of your products uniformly yet individually.
I'm not a UI/UX designer, you're the professional - but boring websites have never been popular, right?
Where do you see the greatest need for your services?
Wherever an object is to be advertised that does not (yet) exist. Or something should be presented uniformly and only differ in nuances, such as colors or surface textures. I am primarily talking about use in online shops, where stringency and clarity are important factors. But high-quality image material is also essential in advertising, print or digital. Or animations for instructional videos, in which characteristics, functions and relationships are to be illustrated. And of course in exhibition construction: by means of a 3D visualization in advance, the customer can be involved in the stand design process at an early stage.
You have relevant experience in exhibition stand construction, exhibition stand design, would you like to work more in this area again?
I gained my first experience in exhibition construction almost 15 years ago, at ORGATEC in Cologne. From production, assembly, work preparation to project management and stand design, I have therefore constantly expanded my wealth of experience.
I always enjoyed my work and even today I still enjoy implementing one or the other trade fair project.
What tools do you work with?
As interdisciplinary as working as a freelance designer is, so are our work tools. But of course I spend most of my time with 3D software, here I ventured into Blender at the beginning of the year, having created my 3D visualizations so far mainly with Rhinoceros 3D in combination with KeyShot. Post-production then in Photoshop or Lightroom and everything else with the usual suspects from the Adobe Creative Cloud.
My tip: a program that I unfortunately discovered for myself rather late: PureRef. A small tool that allows you to arrange images on a canvas. A game changer for anyone who works with reference images and templates.
What are the benefits of Blender?
The scope. Because it is an open source project, Blender offers, in addition to the standard functions of modelling, animation, VFX, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, a variety of add-ons that facilitate, improve and/or extend the workflow.
What are the benefits of 3D designs?
I will return to a few points from the question earlier, but I would like to mention the most important point in advance: cost savings. What has once been created as a 3D model can be reproduced, adapted and changed as often as you like without much effort. A conventional photo shoot can by no means keep up with this in terms of flexibility and price.
And then, as already mentioned above, the wide range of possible applications: high-quality product visualizations, animations, moving 360° images, augmented and virtual reality...
It can probably be broken down to these 3 points: sales-promoting - customizable - cost-effective.
How is working with your customers in 3D projects?
As is likely in most other design professions, the client first approaches me with their wishes and ideas and we coordinate which of them can be implemented and how, i.e. we define objectives.
The initial situation is often very different: there are often very specific guidelines according to which I construct and design. These can be technical drawings, photos or sketches; based on this information, I first create the 3D model. But there are also projects where the design bracket is a bit wider and the result should be less of a 1:1 image, but offer me more creative freedom when the goal is, for example, to represent a complex context.
How do you think the design industry has changed in recent years, and how do you see future development?
The biggest change is, of course, on the technical side: Computers are becoming more powerful, programs are becoming more sophisticated, and the great spectre of AI hovers over all of this. But instead of seeing artificial intelligence as a threat, we should learn to benefit from it: it is clear that the designer can not only remain an executive in the long term, but creativity and the ability to view and implement projects as a whole are also required.
You recently started a blog on your website, what can we read there?
Everything about 3D, prepared for newbies, noobs and nerds. But I don't really want to commit myself to this, I see my blog more as a fluid experiment - let's see in which direction it develops.
Thanks Felix, if you would like to learn more and see Felix's work, feel free to have a look at herrfelix.com past.
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