We recently connected with Gurmukh Bhasin and have shared our conversation below.

Gurmukh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about how you got your first non-friend, non-family client. Paint the picture for us so we can feel the same excitement you felt on that day.

In 2016 I decided to start my own 3D Concept Design business. Before then, I had worked as a designer at various large video game, entertainment and architectural companies. While working as a professional, I had always done my own design projects in my spare time for fun, because I often felt like my professional work was never fully my own. With art directors, CEO’s, lead designers and clients always having a hand in guiding the design in one direction or another, I would often wish the final design was something different than what it turned out to be.

Personal projects where every design decision is my own and the final output truly represents my vision and who I am as a designer have always been something important for me to do. I use personal projects to sharpen my skills, learn new techniques, bring my imagination to life, and most importantly I use them as my own marketing to spread the word on my brand as a designer. When I share my work on social media, my website and online portfolio sites such as Behance and Artstation, my audience sees what I have created and stores me in the back of their mind as a potential designer for future projects.

When I first started offering my design services in 2016, I wasn’t sure where to look for projects and how to find clients. Luckily I had just spent 2.5 years designing spaceships for a large video game and that project put my name on the map. I often had clients reaching out to me for small design projects, but when I fully went off on my own, I knew I needed a few large clients to really make my design business sustainable.

One day towards the end of 2016 I got an email asking me if I wanted to take a stab at designing a tire for a very well known tire company. At first I thought that the project would only take a day or two, and that I am a concept designer but not an engineer, so what would I know about designing a tire? I almost emailed back that I wasn’t interested, but I had a few days before I was going on vacation with some free time and so I said sure, I will give it a go.

To get the project started, I set up a call with the project manager who sent me the email and asked where he got my info from. I was used to clients reaching out, but had never considered tires as an area where my skills would be useful. He told me that there were two 3D artists that were working in his company who had recently left their positions and they would often use my personal projects from my Behance portfolio as reference for their work. When they were leaving they had suggested the project manager reach out to me to see if I would be interested in doing design work for the company.

Little did I know that 7 years later, I would still be doing design work with the same company as one of my favorite clients. So far I have helped design over 15 tires, with many of those tires seen daily on vehicles all over the world. It is fun to see a design we start completely from scratch and take through many iterations, finally go fully into production and end up out in the real world. Everytime I get to see one of my tire designs on a vehicle for the first time out on the street is a very special and proud moment for me. And it is so crazy to think that the client I almost turned down, has been one of the most enjoyable and long lasting design relationships in my career so far.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my career as an Architect where I have both my bachelors and masters degrees in architecture and worked as an Architectural Designer for over 8 years.  I found the field of architecture to not be fulfilling my creative needs and I decided to make a career switch to 3D Concept Design in film and games.

Changing careers was very challenging, but my passion for creativity pushed me forward.  In the beginning I would use my architectural design skills and apply them to fictional projects and come up with my own concepts that created a portfolio.  I also took a few small classes, practiced my 3D skills and learned all I could about the concept design industry.  Luckily in 2014 I landed a job at a video game company where I was designing spaceships for a popular video game.  Working on that game put my name on the map and I started to get recognized for design talents.  I was so grateful to have my personal and professional work published in books and magazines, give talks at universities and ended up teaching at one of the best visual effects schools in the world on the side.

In 2016 I decided to go off on my own and start my 3D Concept Design business www.gurmukhbhasin.com.  I now work with amazing clients across many industries, and help them bring their ideas to life.  A client will come to me with an idea they have in their head, and I will work digitally in 3D to visually bring that idea to life.  We ideate back and forth till the concept is perfect and then the design will then be passed down the line to engineers, builders, and production artists, to make the final product.  I have helped my clients win large projects and make big sales with the help of my 3D art and design.  My wide range of clients is often exciting and keeps my brain sharp and challenged.  I have worked with aerospace engineers, the military, tire and car companies, creative and marketing agencies, on video games, in virtual reality, on commercials, tv and film.  And I have had the pleasure to teach many students.

At the end of the day, my passion for design and creativity is what is constantly pushing me forward.  I always find time to work personal design projects into my busy schedule, because bringing my own ideas to life is what I am the most proud of and what makes me the most happy.  My background in architecture mixed with my 3D concept design skills and my attention to function and detail, has put me in a unique place where my fictional design concepts feel believable and real.  I love pushing myself and playing with different conceptual ideas, and once a project is done I get to share my creation with the world.  It brings me a lot of joy to see people react to my digital works of art.  The internet is an amazing place where my work will travel around the world and I will often get messages from all walks of life.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a designer/artist is bringing my own unique creations into this world, sharing my designs to inspire others and having my work live on as my own little legacy. I love that I am able to create something completely brand new that has never been seen before and wouldn’t exist without my time and effort. I love that every piece of art that I make, shares my creative voice and represents who I am as a designer. I love that my clients hire me to help them visualize their ideas in my style and they trust me to create something beyond their wildest dreams. And I love that I get to make a living off of the ideas in my head and my skills to represent those ideas digitally.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When it was time to graduate from highschool and decide what to study in college, I, like I am sure many others are, was confused about what to pursue as a career. I loved math, science and art in school, and loved skateboarding in my spare time. Skateboarding caused me to look at buildings in a different way and allowed me to see them as unique pieces of art. I decided to mix my interests together and I came up with the idea of becoming an Architect.

I loved studying architecture in undergrad, and found the 3 dimensional problem solving of physical space along with dreaming up new ideas to be something I was really good at. Once I graduated, I went to work at a very small architectural firm designing residential and retail spaces. The work was okay, but definitely not as exciting or creatively fulfilling as I was hoping for. I thought to myself, I need to get my masters degree in order to work at the bigger firms on the better projects.

Once again, in grad school, I loved coming up with my own conceptual ideas and sharing those ideas with my audience. After graduation, I went to work for a large architecture firm, on projects all over the world. I thought I finally was going to enjoy the work I would do as an architectural designer. But sure enough, I didn’t really enjoy what I was doing. I felt about 10% of the work was actually creative and I couldn’t see myself doing this type of work for the rest of my life.

Eventually I would be laid off from my job due to the economic/housing crash of 2008 and I found myself alongside many other architects unemployed for 2 years. I was buried in student loan debt so I couldn’t afford to go back to school, but I knew I needed to make some kind of change. One day I stumbled into an art show at a visual effects school in hollywood. The show was of a famous concept artist who worked in film and games and he would design everything from alien worlds, to creatures, vehicles, props and more. The work was something I had never seen, and a light bulb moment went off in my head. I thought, this is what I want to do for a living.

I went home and started working on a way to switch careers into being a concept designer. I already had design skills from architecture and knew how to work in 3D, so I took those skills and started designing fictional concepts and worked towards building a concept design portfolio. Due to limited funds, I found a few small classes on things like robot design, environment design and illustration, and used those classes to learn more about the concept design industry and help add projects to my portfolio.

It took me about 4 years to build a strong body of conceptual work, study, go to workshops, and work my way out of architecture and into the entertainment design industry. I never once wanted to quit this new direction because the work was so much fun to create and it just felt like the right thing to do. Getting my foot in the door was very difficult and plenty of people said my way of doing concept design was wrong, or that leaving architecture was a mistake. But I knew that what I was doing was the correct thing for me. Eventually in 2014 I landed my first video game job where I got to design spaceships for a very popular game, and the rest is history.

Making the transition was far from easy, but I trusted my gut and kept pushing forward. I am glad I made that change when I was young, because I don’t think I have the energy for that these days. I definitely love what I do now, and I know I made the right choice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gurmukhbhasin.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gurmukhb/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gurmukh.bhasin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurmukhbhasin/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/gurmukhbhasin
• Other: https://www.behance.net/gurmukh