Meet Nikolas Ilic

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nikolas Ilic a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nikolas, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I don’t know if it’s something you overcome as an artist to be honest. I would say I have gotten better at managing it and accepting those thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them. Every time I start a new project I start to have those familiar thoughts like I’m not good enough, but as I keep pushing myself along I break through those thoughts and regain my confidence. Knowing this is and accepting this as part of the process definitely strengthens my confidence with the more experience I gain in my career.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My name is Nikolas Ilic and I am an artist working as both a character designer in the animation industry and a children’s book illustrator/author. Creating both characters and illustrations for children’s book is very rewarding. Especially when you see people connect with the characters and illustrations that I have created. Seeing kids reading and engaged in some of my books is one of the most rewarding aspect’s to my job!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I would say being kind, dedicated, and willing to take risks were three impactful qualities that were important in my journey as an artist. My advice to folks just starting out would be to consider incorporating these into their skill sets. Being kind as simple as it sounds can go a long way. It not only makes you an easy person to work with which leads to strong connections, it also leads to meeting other people which could lead to other opportunities. Being dedicated to your craft is something that comes from the love you have for it. I think it really shows through someone’s art who is dedicated to their craft and who isn’t. So my advice would be to keep doing the thing you love and you will be dedicated to it. Lastly, taking risks. This is important to expand your skill set. Sometimes being uncomfortable is a good thing as it pushes you to learn and improve upon your weaknesses. If you don’t take risks you remain stagnant which might feel more comfortable in the short term but may do more harm in the long term to your learning and skillset. These risks don’t have to be life changing either and can be done at a pace that is comfortable for you to manage.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?

This is a very interesting question for me. Because I think my old self would have said to go all in on your strengths. I think if you truly love what you do, why not go all in and master it and become known for that. This pulls into being dedicated to your craft. However, I do still agree with that thinking but I also believe as an artist there is a curiosity to new things and its worth exploring those avenues that appeal to you to make you more versatile. Especially in the current animation industry where we are seeing big changes. Its very helpful to be able to do different roles more then ever and increases your chances of getting hired.

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