Hi Andrew, thanks for taking your time for this interview. Could you introduce yourself to the community and tell us about your background?

Hi! My name is Andrew Averkin and I am 3D environment artist from Blur, which creates stunning game cinematics and visual effects for films. Also, I am the founder and the head of a game project called Utopia.

I was born and grew up in Ukraine, in the city of Odessa, in a family of workers, artists, sculptors, writers, and musicians. My father is a builder and handyman but in his youth, he loved painting same as his mother, who was a wonderful artist and poet. My great-grandfather was a first-class sculptor. Mom is an engineer by education, but life tied her work with library. Books and literature became her biggest hobby. Her father played trumpet for a long time in a military orchestra. I think that in part that huge passion for art and creativity were passed on to me by all these talented people.

In my childhood I was attracted to drawing, writing poetry and music. At that time, in the 90's, my TV was full of Hollywood blockbusters: Star Wars, Terminator, Robocop, Alien, Predator - only a part of my favorite films of that time. Perhaps these films also influenced my formation as an artist!

A little later, when I had my first ZX Spectrum computer, and then a Dendy, Sega Megadrive, and PC, I began to dive deeper into the world of computer games. However, here I was wondering about how to create really great games with such wonderful graphics, storyline, and gameplay!

I remember my first and very significant meeting with computer graphics. I was in high school and a friend told me about one very interesting software. "You can create anything you want, and the only limit is your imagination!" he said. It was 3D Studio Max, version R2 if I'm not wrong. Literally the next day, I was sitting next to my friend and looking madly on his monitor, where he was spinning some amazing space stations and spaceships. All this moved and came to life in my eyes and it was absolutely beautiful! From that moment I realized that my life would be tied with CG, and since that time we have been best friends!

All these things were a huge influence on the decision of who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.

You have worked on various projects with Blur Studio. How did you get in touch with Blur Studio and start working with them?

I first started working in advertising and architectural visualization because it was a great opportunity to gain experience and skills in 3D. Almost every day after work I continued to study other fields of CG.