Illustrator and designer Maria Chimishkyan found her way into 3D in an unexpected way. At college working on a series of abstract patterns, she was thinking about rigid, heavy industrial materials and imagining them in a state of free motion. “Particle board became very interesting to me, it’s such a ubiquitous construction material and consists of many tiny pieces of wood,” says Chimishkyan. “An image of it freely exploding from its solid state back into those tiny pieces came into my mind. I wanted to find a way to visualise this: physics, dimension and all. And thus began my journey into 3D.”

Working across motion design, illustration, and art direction, Chimishkyan sees her practice as fluid and tends not to label herself as anything specific, but more thinks of these titles as skills. “The world feels as though it’s becoming increasingly genre-less in a way that I like. Sometimes defining the difference between illustration, motion and design starts to feel irrelevant,” she reflects. “To me the free overlap of all of these areas is the most gratifying place to be.”