An Innocent Child

When I was a Kid, wanted to be an writer. Or maybe a movie director. Or maybe an manga artist. To be honest, I don’t remember, or rather say that I didn’t had a specific dream job to have.

But one thing I know for sure is that I wanted to be an Artist. What the job is wasn’t important. The idea of creating my own world and expressing it to the entire world gave me indescribable thrill.

I grew up reading a lot of novels and Manga. I enjoyed most genres but Sci-Fi was the sweet spot for me. I remember being mad that I wasn’t born in an time where I can’t explore the galaxy like in the books. If you can’t experience it in person, than the best alternative was to imagine it.

I used to be good at imagination. After reading a book, or watching a movie, my mind was expanding the world that I just experienced. Sometimes I even wrote short comics about my favorite character with my own stories, which unfortunately I can’t find anymore.

Such an innocent time filled with endless excitement.

Corporate Burn Out

But as I got older, the reality of this world started to weigh heavily on my back. My teenage days weren’t as interesting as the novels I used to read. About the time I graduated from University, my love for art has faded away.

Fast forward to today, I am a guy in his late 20s who has a mundane office job focusing in accounting and finance.

Yes, it is a stable and important job that I am proud of. But as I stare at spreadsheets all day and writing reports about pro forma EBITDA projections, whatever that means, I couldn’t ignore this empty void that exists within myself.

There was still a desire to be something different.

Admiration and Envy

You might have been wondering about the header image of this post. If you don’t know, it’s a scene from “Blade Runner 2049”, a Sci-Fi movie staring Ryan Gosling that came out in 2017.

Couple of weeks ago, I randomly came a cross it in Amazon Prime and watched it to spend my weekend, and it left me more impact than I first watched it 8 years a go in theater.

The futuristic environment that blends our modern world and advanced technologies, the emotions of artificial minds which is perfectly conveyed by the actors. Every thing about it felt special. As I admire the people who created the world, I found envy deep inside my heart.

I wished I could create something as beautiful. So, I decide to challenge to recreate it in my own way.

A Holographic Girl and a Donut

The scene I chose for the header is when “K”, the protagonist of the story, first time interacted outside of his room with “JOI”, his personal AI companion who is a hologram.

It conveys the connection between the two character, who are both just an artificial programs. Can programs love each other? I don’t know. Most people would probably say no. But in my eyes, it felt there were deeper connection that cannot be explained by the work of an algorithm.

Maybe because I recently broke up with my girlfriend, but this scene has been stuck in my heart all time. I wanted to recreate the environment, the characters, their emotions…but I don’t know how.

After a lot of research, I found the perfect starting point.

It was to make a Donut.

The Goal of this Blog

I’m not sure if you ever heard of the name Blender. I’m not talking about the thing you use to make smoothy’s. Blender is an open source 3DCG software, which can be used to create high-quality animations and stuff.

I don’t remember how I came across it, but after installing it and starting up for the first time, my brain literally froze up. I always imagined myself to be somewhat tech-savvy person, but I didn’t know what I was looking at.

Like, “What the f*ck is this cube?”.

Fortunately, after additional research in YouTube led me to my Messiah, The Donut Tutorial by Blender Guru.

The Donut tutorial series, created by Blender Guru, seemed to be the most well known gateway to learning Blender, or maybe even 3D in general, for beginners. It didn’t take that much until I subscribed to Blender Guru’s channel.

My goal is to recreate the scene from “Blade Runner 2049”.
My tool to accomplish that is Blender, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I have to start by making a donut.

So that’s what this blog is. It’s the journey from that donut to that rain scene. From basic shapes to recreating the moment K and JOI touched in the rain. I don’t know how long it’ll take. I don’t know if I’ll even get there. But I will try to rekindle my passion and love I had as a kid and fulfill my life with the joy of creation.

If you’re reading this and share the same struggle, I hope you find something here. Maybe we’ll figure out a way to share our progress along the way.