Gurmukh Bhasin

Gurmukh Bhasin is 3D concept artist at Cloud Imperium Games working on spaceships for Star Citizen.

Early life
In high school he loved maths and science and art. He decided to study architecture at Arizona State University.

After his bachelor degree he took a year off working at a small architecture firm then did his masters degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He was thrown at Maya as a design tool rather than a modelling tool which he had to learn to use by himself. He was thought to think outside the box. He fell in love with Maya and the digital practive of design at a time where architecture was still mostly taught and done as drawnings with a pencil and a parellel bar.

He then got a job at an architecture firm called 5+Design working on projects around the world, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Egypt, India, China, and more on manmade islands, huge developments, malls etc, but he felt ecreatively constrained at a time when the economy was crashing and arhitecture was hit pretty bad with firms laying off half their staff. He was laid off in 2009 and unemployed for two years during which he started a carrer change in concept art working on his portfolio and taking classes and online courses when he could.

In 2011 he started working for Akar Studios where he took more of a design leadership role due to a firm sall size.

Work at CIG
In 2010 he went to a weekend workshop at which David Hobbins was making a presentation and they exchanged emails and communicated a bit over time. When years later David Hobbins got a job at CIG he asked Gurmukh if he wanted to help on a junior position which Gurmukh was happy to accept in 2014.

His first task was to design a luxury interior for the Constellation Phoenix which tied well with his architectural background. He then worked on Mustang variants.

He worked on the Carrack.

Quotes

 * "I have never work so hard on something in my life, but i am lucky enough to work on something i love, so it doesn't really feel like work at all."
 * "There were so many people who told me I wouldn’t make it along the way, so many people who told me I was making a mistake, doing it wrong, so many times I wanted to give up and wondered if I should just focus on my Architecture career. Making that career switch has shown me that nothing is impossible and that this is just the beginning."

Trivia

 * He's a skateboarder and his skateboarding trip to Barcelona inspired him creatively. He's also deeply inspired by religious building, especially in India, where his father is from, despite not being very religious.
 * His favorite architectural designers are Zaha Hadid as well as Tom Wiscombe, who was his proffesor in grad school.
 * His favorite digital artists are David Hobbins, Daniel Simon and Ben Procter, as well as Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie.
 * He wants to eventually work as a concept artist for the film industry and create his own concept design firm.
 * He plays soccer.