Michal Jelinek – “I wanted to move away from my working desk”

We talk to Michal Jelinek about his work in the digital concept design industry.

Michal Jelinek has worked for some major players including Autodesk. His work is sought by clients from across the globe and his projects for the automotive industry has drawn particular acclaim.

Creative Chair spoke to Mike to find out more about his work and the digital concept design industry.

You can see more work from Michal Jelinek on his website and Behance.

Hi Michal, could you tell us a little more about yourself and what you do?

Sure. I used to pay my bills mostly by working for automotive and transportation design clients, although I am recently observing a massive shift towards more conceptually aimed projects; which I utterly enjoy.

These days, my customers are literary global. From California to Brisbane, I fly through the time zones from my studio hidden in the beautiful countryside, close to the woods, in nature.

Your designs are quite futuristic. What is the inspiration behind your visual style?

Hmm. Thanks for calling them futuristic!  I would probably call them speculative, as I’ve designed them with existing technologies in my mind. I just love to push them to an extreme. Just to give you an example: NC prototyping is known for decades, but nobody thought that this tool could be once used for mass production. And here we go. Apple carves their laptops with NC milling machines from the single pieces of aluminium.

In another example, although we may think of electro polymers helping us to build active components at the size of a glove or arm, I believe that we should be able to use them at the scale of a vehicle.

You’ve done some work using new VR technologies like Tilt Brush. Do you think that VR is having, or is going to have a significant impact on the way that 3D models are created on an industry scale?

I had one primary motivation to use VR. I wanted to move away from my working desk. My creative process requires a lot of sketching and computer work, so the idea of performing my sketches and sculpting in room scale VR was more than tempting.

As you can see, it already has an impact at least in my very case! Without too much guessing, I can clearly see the joy of millions of designers and engineers being liberated from their chairs.

With that, it is fair to admit that software tools are not yet ready for such level of professional use. Although … as we observe new announcements in this field every day, it may happen anytime!

Finally, if you died and got reincarnated as a song, what would that song be?

Haha, great question. With no hesitation, I present you Mike Jelinek, the Firestarter by Prodigy ;-)