We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniil Alikov. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniil below.
Daniil, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
Pretty much all my life I was pursuing the idea of earning a living by doing what I love and where my passion is. And actually it happened to me three times. I succeeded twice and currently I’m working hard on achieving the main professional goal of my life. But let’s start from the beginning. First time I realized that I would like to be a professional artist when I was 20 years old. At the time I was interested mostly in two things – graphic design and computers. Since I was 17 I was learning graphics software products like Photoshop and one for vector graphics called Corel Draw. But it wasn’t like I was learning it because I wanted to be a professional. I was genuinely interested in the way I could use my computer (it was Pentium 1 I think) not only as a gaming console but as a whole studio for doing some creative tasks. Back then I, with my friends, had a music band where I was a front man and we even recorded some albums using a very small and simple home recording studio. Because I already knew how to use a computer to produce some graphics I designed covers for our albums. That was my very first designer task in my life.
So when at 20 years old I started to look for a serious job, the choice of the profession was pretty much obvious. I found a job as a Graphic Designer and I worked in printing houses as well as at an outside advertising company. I was totally happy doing this job because it was my huge passion at the time but after 5-6 years of doing that, my new passion was rising on the horizon.
That new passion has been 3D graphics which, by the way, is still my day job. I was switching from graphic design to 3D slowly and at first it was just an addition to my main job of designing advertising products of all sorts. But once I realized the huge potential of 3D graphics and how it has been used in games and movies I knew I wanted to get into it professionally. Again, I was learning new software and making my own projects as training. I did it for a couple of years, constantly posting my renders online and then I moved from my home town in Siberia to Moscow where I found a new job. This time it was related to 3D and movies. This path led me to getting hired by one of the major VFX studios in the world at their branch office in Singapore.
I lived in that sunny country for several years and exactly there in 2014 I started my third and the most challenging career. At some moment I realized that doing computer graphics for movies would hardly give me full satisfaction as an artist because of lacking creative freedom in the team oriented environment. I wanted to make my own creative decisions, choosing my own approach, theme and overall direction of my artistic development. Simply put, I knew I wanted to be an independent professional fine artist. It is still a dream but I’m working hard to finally get to the reality where I will make a living doing entirely my own projects. Well, I made it twice, I will make it happen again!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Well, as I said before my main job currently is in Visual Effects. My specialization is Texture Artist and I have been working at this position for the last 16 years. By now I have been credited in at least 15 movies including blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Deadpool 2 and many more. I like my job and even after all those years I still learn something new and have exciting moments when a movie we all worked on for months is out and I can see my work on a big screen together with many people around the world. But after all, the most favorite thing to do for me is spending time in my small studio where I create my physical artworks. Since 2014 I have been developing my own visual language, extensively thinking about it every spare minute of my life and dedicating all my free time to the actual process of making new art. From the very beginning I made only abstract art because I find it the most freedom giving direction in visual art where you can literally do whatever you want without being dependent on certain rules and limitations.
For a long time I thought I was looking for a certain philosophy which would add some meaning to the abstract art I do. I was strongly bonded to the classic idea where fine artists should have a nice explanation to their art and use it as an upfront story leading to the full understanding and appreciation of their pieces by a picky audience. But after years of testing myself in creating that super narrative, writing complicated statements with lots of specific words less people really understand, I got to the most extraordinary realization in my life – “In art, I don’t have to follow established rules and act the way institutions want it. Art, and especially abstract one, shouldn’t necessarily carry some meaning or a story to satisfy someone who expects it. I am not a storyteller, nor a writer, nor a philosopher. I am a visual artist and my thing is visual content I can and will create.”
I can’t describe in words how liberating it was to get to such a conclusion. Once I have decided that I will be doing art which is simply new and pleasing to the eye I got full artistic freedom and I immediately have seen the path I should follow and I finally found my authentic visual language I could use to create works with infinite variations staying in one recognizable style. And you know, after that I noticed that not only I myself became happier about the process of making my art and seeing the results but the audience which follows me loved my new pieces way more than old ones. Everything just got together!
Now, besides actually producing my art I’m thinking about developing the business part of it. Scalability is one of the things which gets my attention these days. As an artist I want to show my work to the maximum number of people possible and in order to achieve that I need to grow. Not only grow the quality or attractiveness of my creations but also growing my thing as a business. Will see where it will lead me but currently I’m very much focused on this idea and I will try to master it over time.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
To be honest I was totally excited when NFTs became a global thing. As a digital artist I was happy to know you can now sell your digital images in the same way you would sell a unique physical piece of art. I made some NFTs also and they are still on sale on several platforms but what I learned soon after I got into it was that NFT thing is basically a way to monetize your following. In other words – the bigger your audience is the more you have chances to sell your unique non-fungible token – NFT. It could be frustrating for artists with smaller following (like myself) to find out that you can make NFTs with quality not worse than the majority of all of them but your chances to actually sell it are so minuscule that it gets harder to motivate yourself to continue making them when most of times you have to pay gas fee which could be expensive. And after all, I got exhausted from sitting by the computer and making my own art. I do it enough at my day job. Now I know that I love making physical art with my hands. The feeling of the material you work with and your own body that are living in the same physical world is amazing. It is a very humbling experience which is lacking when you work in digital space. That’s just my own opinion on this topic.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My own mission as an artist is to create more beauty as I see it. I believe that artists of many sorts and visual artists in particular are very important people for a society because they add beautiful and thoughtful and sensitive into the culture and it certainly enriches the cultural landscape of the society which hopefully makes people more thinking and loving rather than aggressive and automatic. Also my mission is to enjoy what I do. That’s very important part too!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.daniilalikov.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d_alikov
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alikov/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlikovDaniil
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5678159/
Image Credits
Photos by Daniil Alikov