Cosmocube: "Constantly Moving Forward"

Ivaylo Begov is founding partner at COSMOSCUBE. Passionate about natural and extraordinary way of experiencing the world. Seeking for connection between man made and primordial things. Trying to capture these by the tools of photography, illustration and CGI.

Ivaylo graduated with a degree in Architecture at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia in 2014. Along with Evgeniy Kondev, they found COSMOSCUBE at early 2015. As a partner Ivaylo is dealing with all of the process regarding the services that the company is providing and business development.

Please, give me some background on your past works / how you became a cg artists? What places have you worked in? 

The usual story about the love for the visual arts somewhat unfulfilled with architectural design in its complexity. Loving simple things!
First thing that I did after graduating architecture was to start workin in the CG industry. Actually i wasn't already graduated when I started working. I was part of Red Vertex studio based in Sofia, where i grew my skills, expertise and confidence. This helps me today in my everyday work as a cg artist and also running Cosmoscube. In my opinion one of the best works that i've done is the image nominated in 2015 in CGarchitect awards, called Desert Facade. Not because of the nomination, but because of the message that it brings - things don't have to be complex to look nice.

How big is your company? What are your main fields of interest?

I am trying to stay closer to the 3d artist work despite the large variety of commitments facing me as a partner of the company. Dealing with a lot of side work, primarily related to running small business. As this is my first ever dive into this field, I develop my skills and personality along with the company and feel somehow closely related to it.

I love the chance to live in time with no communication limits so we're able to jump on projects all around the globe without the need to be physically there. We're based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Located into the context and scale of residential buildings built during the Interwar period along Ivan Asen II str. Really cozy and natural environment where one could relax just by taking a walk. It turns out that for me environment is one of the main signs that determine spaces, workplaces etc. and puts people into their place.

Opening new company: what was the biggest problem?

In my opinion the biggest challenge is to be able to question perceptions and habits that you took as an absolute benchmark in the recent past.

What hardware / software do you work on? What main techniques do you use?

We use 3dsmax, Vray, Photoshop, After Effects as main tools. Also we are constantly developing new techniques and experimenting with some new software when we got our so-called creative days. Recently we are crafting some projects using UE4. The idea here is to be able to get out of any software limits, by exploring different products and pipelines.

What are your plans for your company? More people? Better computers? More software? More offices? :)

Get better and better! Cultivate really great artists, who are able to state proudly that they are part of the company or they were part of the company. Assuming that people tend to develop themselves and move on, I am happy to be a part of this development.

What do you think about current cg / arch-viz industry? How do you see your competition, software development, clients needs? What is the most important in running that kind of bussiness? Any advice for other cg artists?

I see that the industry is constantly moving forward. The artworks out there is more often top quality no matter where the artist is based. I dream of better conditions here in Bulgaria for construction and investment business in general, more competition which leads to better quality and user experience.

What will be the next big step in your opinion?

We have already taken the next step which is the Virtual Reality – walk-through or static viewcubes. The challenge is to explore the boundaries and to be able to keep the artistic approach, rather than just imitate the reality.

Thank you for an interview!

For more information visit COSMOCUBE website.