Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nina Marie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

My journey started back in highschool where I poured out my heart and soul into the arts. I was always known for drawing or painting in my school. I also felt deeply passionate about photography and was accepted into Maryland College of Art for college.
However I soon discovered that I really did not like the lack of work-life balance that this fine arts school offered. Everything had to be eat sleep and breathe art and nothing else. I ended up transferring to a university that my boyfriend was going to out in Michigan and fell in love with it!! It offered fantastic facilities for photography and web design. I worked hard to build up a solid portfolio for myself.

Right out of college I was picked up by a recruiter and started working at 1 Rockefeller Center in NYC for DirecTV/AT&T’s inhouse agency as a Senior Retoucher in 2014. I fell in love with the team there and felt right at home. We all worked in a small dark room together where you could learn from one another and share tips or tricks that we had picked up over the years. We were responsible for creating all of the Audience Network television series artwork and coming up with new campaign designs for product launches, advertising NFL Sunday Ticket by creating iconic banners that lived in bars across the nation each year, as well as designing epic visuals for huge events and concerts put on by AT&T. It was here that I was introduced to Cinema 4D and started learning it more on my own in 2017.

But all good things must come to an end, and that happened right when the pandemic struck. The entire department was shut down and everyone was forced to go their separate ways. Thankfully I landed another incredible opportunity working with Design Bridge and Partners shortly after in 2020 as a Senior CGI Artist and visualizer. Here I refined my skills at still life rendering where I worked on creating photo realistic bottle and product renders for pack redesigns.

Just recently they too had to lay off their entire visualization team in NY due to financial concerns, so I have since been freelancing with multiple other agencies – creating a wide variety of work from sculpting animals to creating beautiful 3d visuals for big pharma to more high quality bottle renders for advertising purposes!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started as a general artist, diving into the fundamentals of drawing and painting. From there I transitioned my studies into photography, both documentary and studio, utilizing raw natural light and creating my own artificially. I found myself becoming more interested in the compositing post production side of things, where I could transform my images into something more. But when I discovered the limitations of using found photos to retouch into the scene (because you needed to find the same perspective, lighting, camera angle etc for it all to be believable), I decided to learn more about 3D – where I have full control over my environment.

In my 8 years of learning 3D, I’ve uncovered a love for sculpting in Zbrush, practicing simulations in Houdini, creating realistic hair in Maya with XGen, but most importantly mastering lighting, texturing and rendering in Cinema 4D and Octane render engine. I have a wide array of tools at my disposal with an art background and a deep understanding of post production needed to take an image to the next level.

You can view my portfolio of renders, photography, web design and retouching all on my website here: www.ninamarievisuals.com

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve been told that I work very quick, but sometimes that comes at a cost. When you are too rushed, you don’t take the time to really sit down and look at your work. I was told by my mentor about the importance of looking at your work at 100% resolution, because this way you are actually seeing it all for what it really is, and taking it all in at the microscopic level, as well as taking a step back and looking at it as a whole, even in tiny form, because the work we create sometimes could live on a billboard or just be an ad on social media!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think for me the most rewarding feeling is when others truly appreciate and are in awe of your work. We spend countless hours on a piece, sometimes embarrassingly too many for us to proudly share, and when people view our end result and say things like ‘I want to be like you, you are my biggest hero, you are an inspiration to me’, it makes all of those – what felt like lost hours – worth it. Ofcourse I have to remember that some pieces will just not be as successful as others, as that is the nature of our work, and it doesn’t make us as artists any less than, but it does really fuel my soul when I see fans reacting to my pieces :)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ninamarievisuals.com
• Instagram: @ninamarievisuals
• Linkedin: https://Linkedin.com/in/ninamarie
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ninamariephoto

Image Credits

None