On the web, I go by the nick Tim Nikias, even though those two are just my first and second name. Originally, I used the nick because the WWW seemed a little too risky a place to not be at least slightly anonymous. Nowadays, I know my way around the net and what to watch out for, but Tim Nikias is the name I've become known and recognized by, so it sticks. After all, it still is my name.

From Birth to Present

I was born 1981 in some small town in Germany. Growing up along with 3 brothers provided excellent chaos, and a couple of years spent in the USA provided excellent English skills. Which is a nice thing to have if you want to watch movies without translators messing up some of the jokes or wordplays. Although, I do have to admit, some translators do a good job of picking proper equivalents.

Once school was behind me, I immediately went to the university and started studying Media/Computer Sciences, but first civil service, then minor troubles with a couple dozen of tumors (though harmless, I was unable to study due to these for about a year) and finally a very serious driving accident my father had (he was hospitalized for over a year, so I took care of him and family matters) interrupted my studying curriculum. I know this probably won't look too good on my resumee, but I hope my future employers will notice that it wasn't laziness that kept me from finishing my studies, and that a small break after I've finished my diploma thesis should be allowed.

Anyways, I've got a knack for programming and mathematics, so computer sciences was the right choice for my education, and I'd reckon that knack is what's looked for in a programmer. For work, my choice of occupation would be something related with 2D- or 3D-graphics, as Games or VFX have been my areas of personal interest for years now. Creativity and design, as you can see from my 3D-images and the website itself, are also close to my heart, although they had to be put on a bit of a backburner these recent years, but I plan to get back to them.

Hobbies

One of my major hobbies is digital art, as should be obvious by this website. Lately, I wasn't able to produce much new art, because, as it is with hobbies, if you've got too many RealLife(tm) issues, hobbies need to be set aside.

Then, like just about every other person on the planet, I like music, and like every other person on the planet, I have my own taste: I especially enjoy Orchestral Movie Soundtracks, some Heavy Metal, Indie and - shame on me - lots of the mainstream stuff.

I recently got back to the roots by playing boardgames again, such as Zombicide or Super Dungeon Explore. The RPG-elements, setting, as well as the miniatures (I've always enjoyed miniatures) are what draws me to these games, and there is a lot of fun in playing with friends and/or family at a table together.

A long time ago I had also picked up Tabletop-Gaming, which in my case meant Warhammer 40.000. I wasn't a big player though, and along with my other hobbies, it experienced a major setback while I was taking care of more important things. I'm still rather proud of my painting achievements, but I'm quite sure I won't finish the remaining few Space Marines I've got. I do like the painting side of the hobby though, and have frequently been painting the models of boardgames. I'm especially proud of Blood Rage, the heroes I've painted of Massive Darkness, and am currently working my way through Horizon: Zero Dawn and several of the expansions. I've been quite active in pledging to Kickstarter campaigns and have a collection of games, where I start to wonder if I'll ever play them all...

And finally, I very much enjoy movies, own a solid collection of DVDs and BluRays and even worked at a movie theatre as the projectionist (the guy working the projectors to show the movies) for a few years and did a little deskwork.

Future Plans

I've already made a few artworks for small companies and worked on the digital reconstruction of a castle for a museum, as well as have had my images used in books, on CDs and even as tattoos. I'm working in a small software company where I'm still tasked with finding creative solutions, although less on the artistic side, but more on the algorithmic side. I still find myself wondering if I wouldn't like to attempt working in the gaming industry, as A.I. (not the recent hype of text-to-image, but rather NPCs in games) , GPU-Programming and 3D-Engines are still interesting fields of development, but for now, I'm quite content with the job I have. As the company is rather small, who knows, maybe someday I'll be the one to expand it towards the gaming sections...

Contacting Me

In case you're interested in emailing me, feel free to do so: TimNikias (at) Gmail (dot) com

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