In early 2021 I decided to take on a brand new challenge - learning to create 3D art in Blender.
I was absolutely fascinated by what people were able to create with this completely free software and the more YouTube videos I watched, the more obsessed I became.
Like most beginner Blender uses, I downloaded the software, opened it with great enthusiasm and... realized I had no fucking idea what was going on.
I clicked around for a bit through the endless menus and options before going back to YouTube to search for some extra beginner friendly tutorials to help me get started on this new venture.
That's when I found the famous Donut Tutorial Series created by the Australian 3D artist, Andrew Price aka Blender Guru aka "the donut guy". (FYI he has since created a new Donut Tutorial series for the most recent version of Blender which you can find here.)
With the help of this series I was (very slowly) able to create a digital donut for myself!
And then I made it radioactive just for funsies.
Just a couple months later, Andrew sent out an email asking for everyone to send in their donut masterpieces. His idea was to create a giant community mosaic of everyone’s Blender donuts so he could auction off the final result to raise money for Blender, the software that made this all possible.
I proudly sent my donut in and promptly forgot about the whole thing. That is until I got an email today (almost a year later) that the project was finished!
Here is the final result of 17,731 3D rendered donuts being used to create a HUGE donut mosaic. Each pixel in the image is a unique donut created by people learning Blender.
You can see the the final mosaic in full screen here and you can even zoom in to see each individual donut in the image! There is also a donut database where you can search by name or country to see each donut individually. My donut is #13907 and you can see it in its full glory here.
If you're interested to learn more about how Andrew made this happen, you can check out this video.
If you're interested in the donut auction, which will include the main mosaic and 30 of Andrew's personal favorite donuts from the project, you can check it out on OpenSea. 100% of the sale proceeds are being donated to the Blender Development fund to help millions more artists around the world discover the joy of art.
It's crazy what can be done when a community of passionate people comes together. This is one of the largest artist collaborations in history and it feels awesome to be a part of it!
