My name is Astrid Viktil and I am a 28 year old model maker living in Oslo, Norway. My life began in San Fransisco because my father had a job there, after a couple of years we moved back to Norway where I grew up in Jessheim and Slemmestad. For the past 7 years I’ve lived in Oslo.
I started drawing at an early age and I attended drawing classes when I was about 10 years old. In school I continued to study art and design, and ended up at a private art school here in Oslo for three years. The first year I was allowed to explore a lot while learning. So I tried out a lot of different techiques regarding drawing, printing, sculpting, moulding etc.
The second year I started narrowing it down and consentrated on the 2 dimentional medias. I did a lot of screen printing, photography, sceography and a little bit of animation. The link called “Animation 1″ is from my second year at art school. I also had art history these two years, learning the history up til the 19th century the first year and the 20th century the second year.
After two years I started realizing that I was missing the 3 dimentional form and that I love stop motion animation. I really edmired the people from Aardman after seeing Wallace and Gromit, thinking that it was amazing what they could do with a lump of clay. At the same art school I had attended for the past two years, they offered a one year course called Model Design. So I applied and was accepted and had a wonderful year exploring everything from animation to product models, from architectural models to automata and we also learned some 3D with Cinema4D.
After the year with model making I started looking around for a job and a couple of months after I graduated I was contacted by a model making company here in Oslo. They primarily made architectural models, but also models for museums and exhibitions as well as product models. So I worked there for two years, but the second year was a bit on and off. Beacuse of the difficult financial times, the company I worked for suffered a lot and could not offer us work on a regular basis.
While I was waiting for my employer to give me projects, I started working a bit on my own. I knew some people and got in contact with architects that needed smaller jobs done. One thing led to another and suddenly I got big jobs like making models for the Much and Deichmanske competition that found place here in Oslo in 2009. It was a great experience for me, trying to make it on my own, meeting people and establishing contacts. At that time I did not have access to my own workshop, and that made things a little complicated. I couldn’t offer my clients the full package like I wanted to. So after a while it got tough financially, and approaching summer meant less work. My employer could not offer me jobs anymore, so I had to find another job.
To learn more about how I could run my company better, handling the projects more professionally, I took up Project management as a part time study. I am still learning, taking courses in Change Management and Strategy as well. It’s very exciting and I see clear parallels to the projects I’ve been involved in. So my dream now is to get back in a workshop where I belong.