• Final render of the project

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I finished this project on 22nd July 2022. The raw material was created on 17th July, according to metadata.

That was a harsh time for me. The war had been going on for 6 months at that moment. I think at that time I was looking for new ideas and a new sense of living in these new conditions. Although nothing has changed, I’m still doing this.

I have some periods in my life when I look for new ideas, test them and make drafts. I remember that moment was exactly during that period. I remember a constant feeling of fear, uncertainty, and pointlessness. I was making a draft for stop-motion animation with surrounding bushes and trees, and I was sniffing around my home area for some shots. At some point I looked up at the building from a certain perspective and wondered something like “how would it look if this building was stupid tall?”. Also, I think this building is so tasteless, patterned, and monotonous, so I thought to exaggerate its look in an ironic way. I took a couple of shots with different formats in mind for the final result.

At that time I had an iPhone 6s with a broken camera. The front lens of its rear camera was shattered, or it was completely absent, I don’t remember exactly. Anyway, the camera was not in the best condition. There was some dust inside the camera, which was pretty much visible in the shots, including this one of the building. But I didn’t care about that. I couldn't do anything about it and, moreover, couldn’t afford a new phone. So I treated this artifact as part of my personal visual style.

I have a lot of material that was created because of my searches. But not every shot or idea becomes a finished project. By the time of this project, I didn't have many completed works, that I could call projects and which I could share with others. And that was a bummer, since I had many ideas and I experimented a lot.

I started to make this project further because I was curious about how this building would look if it was very tall. And you know, to get a rough idea, it’s enough to create a very simple scene in 3D software. And I did it, quite quickly. Though, at the same time, I had a strong need to create something I could show others. That need still motivates me to finish things, and it runs deep.

I came up with the following thoughts: the war We have our life right now. Something happens to us every day. What happened last week? Last month? Five years ago? I don’t remember. Time goes by very fast. I’m writing this in Jan 2026 — the war has been going on for four years. When it began, I was 27. Now I’m 31. These four years feel like just one unfinished year. And that year will end when the war ends.

What have we left behind? How has our life been materialized? What have I done in my 27 years? Well, not much I can say. People are dying around me. What if I die? What will be left? Something, probably. But if I continue living, why not leave something from my existence? Something I could return to and look at myself. To create something that has some consequences. Or simply to leave a memory — a confirmation of the fact that I lived.

I also needed a job, or at least some income. That is still relevant since then. This pressure really pushes you to act. So I completed this project in a form I can share with others because of these reasons.
And because of them, I’ve written this reflective text. Well, there may be some more reasons, but I’ll cover them in future posts.

Thank you for reading.

For the last 10 weeks I released 10 videos that I had been developing for at least half a year. It was tremendous work, I have never made anything like this and I gained a lot of experience.

Although I haven't made millions of dollars from it or even $10 so far, I still think it will be useful in the future. Who knows how exactly.

The next thing I want to make is a voiceover for every video in English. I have already done it for the first video lesson. How I managed to do it is another story to tell.

Thanks to all who support me on my path, my parents in the first place.

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In this text I speak with a friend of mine, Sasha, whom I met in our local hackerspace Hacklab in Kyiv. Sasha first introduced me to the Python programming language, he is the kind of guy who orders pizza every weekend for everyone and he made a great kitchen renovation in the hackerspace. And these are just a few positive things about Sasha. I could add more for sure.

Sasha with his family doesn't live in Ukraine now and he is able to travel and compare life, as well as hackerspaces abroad. I wish him good luck.

We had an online interview, which was recorded, and this text is a polished transcript of that live dialogue.

Can you remember the moment when you first learned about the hackerspace? Were you looking for something, or did you feel that something was missing?

Yes, my wife and I moved to Kyiv from Chernivtsi. Back in Chernivtsi, when I was studying at the university, we had a lab where we could do similar kinds of things — solder something, build something. We had a team, we took part in different competitions, built robots, rovers, and things like that. I understood that in Kyiv I definitely wouldn’t be doing this in the apartment. And I needed to find a place where I could do similar stuff. Maybe near the university, maybe somewhere else. I googled for a few weeks, looking for options, because I didn’t know about hackerspaces at all, didn’t even know they existed. And I didn’t know how to explain what exactly I was looking for.

In the end I found three places. One was very expensive, and there you don’t make things yourself — you come, place an order, and they manufacture it for you. The second place was Ostriv, and the third place was Hacklab. I felt that Hacklab fit me the most in spirit, so I decided I should go there and ask how to join.

You know, by the way, what was the hardest thing about the hackerspace at the beginning? Finding it. [laughs]

And what exactly did you get in the hackerspace that you couldn’t get somewhere else?

For the first few weeks I didn’t even come. I was a bit shy, everyone was strangers. But when I started getting to know Hacklab better, how it works, what you can do there, the need to look for something else disappeared. I satisfied all my needs. I always tell everyone that a hackerspace is a community. It’s probably impossible to get something more valuable than cool people. And all the tools, the hangouts, and everything else come as part of the package. But first of all it’s people you can talk to, meet, share interests with, argue, look for answers together. You can agree to work together on projects, solve some problem.

Was it like that at the university? Well, yes. But the university stayed seven hundred kilometers away, together with all the contacts and friends. And just meeting on Saturday or Sunday isn’t that easy. And probably the hackerspace replaced that place for me.

And also I always want to work with tools. For example, I wouldn’t buy a TIG welder or a lathe for my apartment, and I wouldn’t use an angle grinder at home. But to come to the hackerspace and make something with your hands — that’s exactly what I needed.

Was there something you didn’t like there, or something that was missing?

[sighs] I didn’t like the conflict that happened after the grant was received. It seems to me it divided the community a lot. I think that’s the worst thing that could happen to a hackerspace.

I try to be organized in life, and sometimes I miss that in other people. But not everyone can be like me. Like you. Like someone else. People are different, and that’s okay. You come — you have to repair something before you can use it. You come — you have to clean before you can work. These are things that could probably be kept under better control. But the more restrictions there are, the less freedom there is. That’s logical. And a hackerspace is a free place for free people. And for free ideas too.

Did you lose something in your life after moving? Apart from everything else, I understand. But if we talk specifically about the hackerspace, what exactly do you feel you lost?

The generation of our parents, and older, men used to gather in a garage with their friends, hang out, drink a little, talk, have the right to make mistakes. When you do something in the garage, you do it for yourself. Nobody controls you. You can break something, you can fix something, you can make mistakes, you can be right. And that gives a feeling of freedom.

For me, a hackerspace is a very similar place — somewhere you can come, experiment, make mistakes, be right, be wrong. It’s a place of freedom, a place of strength, a place where you can express yourself, your preferences, and satisfy some of your needs, not only material ones. Psychological ones, personal ones.

Someone from the hackerspace once reminded me about a guy, Eric Berne, and he has a book called Games People Play. And he explains the theory that every person has an adult, a child, and a parent inside, if I remember correctly. And it seems to me that the hackerspace was a place for my inner child, a place where I could experiment, work, make little projects. A place where you can be yourself.

Why do you think places like this appear at all, and why do they keep existing?

People have a need for them. In villages people have more space, and probably almost everyone has a garage where they can do something. But in cities people live in very limited space, in apartments. These places — hackerspaces — are centers for people with an engineering mindset, a creative mindset, initiative-driven people.

For example, people who like music and dancing go to clubs. People who like football go to a football field and play. People who like programming — where should they go? People who like welding — where should they go? The world is built for leisure: football, bars, dancing. At least that’s what I see in my bubble. But when people want to do something creative, they have to look for a proper place. A hackerspace partly satisfies the needs of a certain type of people. By the way, artists and different kinds of creators, I think, can also find their place in a hackerspace. I don’t remember if there were many such people in the Kyiv hackerspace, but there was at least one who took my plywood.

Maybe my plywood was in France at an exhibition without me knowing about it, but okay, let it be. [laughs]

You know, I understand football, I understand bars. People need to shout, people need to drink. That’s clear. But what need does a place like a hackerspace satisfy? Nobody from above said that people need it. Someone needed it so that this hackerspace would appear, and someone needs it so that it continues to exist.

In general, one of the reasons I don’t like football is that it’s everywhere, at every step. It’s like spam. Where should people go who want to do chemistry?

To the university?

Okay, but you don’t want to do scientific work. You want to chrome-plate a crab. Or buy a shrimp in a store and cover it with chrome so it looks cool and shiny. Hackerspaces give the possibility for different engineering expressions of personality. Today you want to chrome-plate shrimp, tomorrow you want to powder-coat a part for your car, and the day after tomorrow you want to write an access control system for dangerous equipment.

These are forms of human creativity, I think, and there has to be either a place, or at least a community, that can help, encourage, and share experience with each other.

Okay. Why did you agree to talk about this with me? Not everyone agrees, actually.

Because you’re my friend, and we haven’t talked for a long time, and we can talk on camera without any problem. And besides personal reasons, I think people should know about hackerspaces. And if I can influence that somehow — I want to influence it.

I have a Linktree business card, and after my contacts there is a section called inspiration place, and there is a link to the hackerspace. So when people get to know me, they can also see the hackerspace resource and maybe visit it someday.

You said you visited different hackerspaces. Are they very different?

Over the last year we moved a lot. We changed about seven apartments in different cities, and in every city I looked for a hackerspace. I found two. They were small, with more restrictions. But there is one common thing: there is always a core team of active people who hang out there all the time, constantly making projects. People you see regularly, people you talk to all the time, people you run into again and again. When you come to another hackerspace, there is also its own core team. And in those people I saw the same kind of people as in my Kyiv hackerspace. They are very similar to each other.

I was in Kraków, in Castellón, and in Gothenburg. By the way, the hackerspace in Gothenburg is very cool, but to get access to the equipment you have to take courses, and the waiting list can be a year long.

For example, I wanted to come and make a part for my skateboard. I needed to weld a small aluminum bracket, and they told me that in about half a year or a year I could sign up for welding courses, then after another half a year of waiting I could take those courses one day per week. So several more months would pass, and only after that you can weld in the presence of someone, and if they approve, then you can weld by yourself. So it would be faster for me to complete professional welding training and get a certification than to get access to a welding machine in that hackerspace.

Do they just have a lot of equipment, or are they just very strict?

They are very strict, and the Swedish law forces them to be, and they have a lot of equipment as well. Very good equipment, quite old, but you can only use it. If something breaks, you have to write a report, and then someone from the university staff will repair it. You can’t repair it yourself.

The state regulates everything very strongly. And if you accidentally hurt yourself, for example get burned while welding, the university could go bankrupt. There would be huge problems. In our case everything is much simpler. You have a welder — you weld. That’s it.

You also said you were in Kraków?

In Kraków it’s also funny. They are in a basement or on the first floor, and on the floor above them there is the tax office, and the smoke bothers them a lot. So in that hackerspace they have laser cutters that they are not allowed to turn on. [laughs] And they also can’t turn on the ventilation because it makes noise. And they can’t keep the door open for more than one minute, otherwise there will be a fine. Strange restrictions sometimes.

In Kyiv we actually had a lot of freedom. Very loyal landlord. I even spoke with him personally once when we needed to repair the windows. Very reasonable guy. It’s a very cool place, very few restrictions. Enough right to make mistakes. Nobody will immediately fine you, punish you, beat you, sue you, or something like that. You can talk, you can solve the problem. Everything is very civilized, everything is very good, and there is a right to make mistakes. People make mistakes. We are not robots, and we don’t just follow instructions. It happens.

And these freedoms actually create the creative atmosphere. Restrictions restrict. And the freedom that exists in the Kyiv hackerspace — it matters a lot. But if you break something — repair it, be normal. That’s all.

I've finally made it!

I'm excited to introduce the first lesson of my brand new Blender video course!

Link to the video

Originally, I intended to sell this course, but I decided to make it completely free. I've put a lot of my energy and effort into completing this project. I have never done anything like this before. I have never made educational videos, and I never thought I would do so. But everything can happen for the first time.

I designed this course in such a way that anybody who have never used Blender could learn the basics of this software and start creating something independently using the tools I covered in it. I remember the first Blender course I watched when I started learning. I wasn't satisfied, I can tell. It was very boring and I gave up learning Blender for some time after I finished that course. I can't say it was a bad course – I did learned something. But I struggled while watching it and felt very bored. So I tried to make my own course more diverse and dynamic. I really tried hard to achieve that.

Basically, my main criterion while making the videos was: “Do I feel bored while editing this video?” And I can say for sure that I was very bored with many of my recordings. This is basically the main reason why I refactored and re-recorded the videos several times. I struggled even to make those videos, and watching them would have been a struggle as well.

At some point, I started making records that I was quite satisfied with. This began around the third revision, after I had already made for at least 15 recordings. And every video meant: a new topic, a new script, a new recording, new edits and so on. Just to make it as good as I could accept for myself. And also, which is important, to make it better than the first Blender course I learned from.

I hope this course will be useful. I'm still looking for ways to make some financial profit with this software. I really love it, and I think I will continue searching for ways to make my creative projects created with Blender profitable. It gives me independence in my creativity. And this video course is one of the ways – or at least attempts – to strengthen that independence.

I have an interesting story about how I decided to create this video course. I'll share it in the next post.

Thank you for reading. And thanks to everyone who followed my updates throughout the development process.

By the way, consider to support my work and this project financially! You can do it via this link

Also you can read the stories of the development process here.

Stay tuned for more :)