As the sponsor and long-term partner of the CGarchitect 3D Awards, which is referred to as the Oscar of ArchViz, Fox Renderfarm, the best cloud rendering service provider, is very pleased to speak with Mr. Reinaldo Handaya, who led his team to create an amazing project -- Born Neo, and got nominated in the Image (Non-commissioned) category in CGarchitect 3D Awards.
In our interview, Mr. Reinaldo shared a lot of details about how his team endeavored to make this project happen, and also revealed that he made this competition into an internal challenge. He explained the reason and shared with us the unforgettable hours behind.
Besides, his story of how he got into the industry is quite inspirational and motivating. In 2004, his family factory was razed by fire and left him with $100,000 debt, in the later years, his life was changed because of 3D creation. After winning awards and praise in the ArchViz field,with his partner Evan Mandala, he set up ArchViz studio, 2G Studio, and 2G Academy, a 3D educational platform. With his relentless efforts and business mindset, he is a top-tier ArchViz artist in Indonesia now.
His experience keeps us wondering how he got out of the trouble, kept his pursuit and succeeded at the same time, which Fox Renderfarm thinks you will find the answer in the latter part where he speaks about his plan in the interview.
- Reinaldo Handaya
- CEO at 2G Studio
- From: Indonesia
- Artwork Caption: This project is for our internal challenge to challenge our artist to work together as a team and as a family. We call it a pressure challenge, they have to finish the still image and animation in just 1 week, the building also needs to be modeled from scratch and have to design by themselves.
This pressure challenge is also to help the artists to be creative as they want, because most of the commissioned projects are boring and for the team that wins the challenge will be rewarded with a bonus.
BORN NEO © 2G Studio
BORN NEO ANIMATION © 2G Studio
Fox Renderfarm: Hi Reinaldo! Congratulations on being nominated in the 2020 CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards, how do you feel about it?
Reinaldo: First of all, I want to thank you for having us here. We never thought, not even once, that we would get the nomination, especially in the non-commissioned category. Having been one of the judges in 2014, and I know there are thousands of images submitted to the 3D awards, and there are tons of talented artists in this world, and I feel blessed that one of our team’s works got nominated.
Fox Renderfarm: What’s your inspiration for this amazing project Born Neo? Any idea behind this name?
Reinaldo: I can’t take full credit for this project, me and Evan (Co-Founder of 2G Studio) only help our team to give some space to express themselves and be creative. We give them direction, how to think, how to create the storytelling, the rest is theirs. However, this is also teamwork, not just a single-artist work. The inspiration for this building came from The Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid, and the Harbin Opera House by MAD Architect. The rendering look and feel was heavily inspired by our own friend, Arqui9.
ArchViz by Arqui9
The idea behind this name is because our president decided to move the capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan. Kalimantan’s International name is BORNEO ISLAND. And moving to a new place is kinda like being born new, and the team comes up with BORN NEO, matching the island name. And in fact, there was a competition to design the new capital city, but we didn’t join the competition since it was a design competition, not rendering.
Fox Renderfarm: The building is so terrific, could you introduce the function of the building?
Reinaldo: The building is a convention center, which is a meeting place and also a place for all large-scale activities such as concerts, shows, seminars, as well as national and international level meetings which will certainly be held in the new capital city.
Fox Renderfarm: As you introduced, this is a project from your team’s pressure challenge, so why did you hold this challenge and how long did it take to finish the work?
Reinaldo: There are several reasons why we held this challenge and they only had 7 days to finish 1 still image and a 60 sec animation. Because if there are more than 7 days, chances are, they will never finish.
The first one is to let the team express their creativity, and as you know, our field is filled with people who love architecture, and we challenge our team to do the concept, and the story about why they come up with the concept.
The second reason is to challenge them working overtime. Because we cannot deny that sometimes we’ve got tons of work that we need to work overtime. We just don’t want our team to get spoiled.
The third reason is to give more pressure by asking them to finish in 7 days and should not disturb the real project schedule.
But the ultimate reason is to train them to work as a team. So we split our team into 4 small teams and they have to deliver different concepts, so we got 4 different renderings.
Fox Renderfarm: What’s the most unforgettable and interesting part of the creation process?
Reinaldo: The team is actually enjoying this challenge although they work till 4 am. And it shows that they really love to do some designs and do the render, completely different than working on a real project. Just make sure not to let them do this all the time, or they will hate me for sure hahaha.
The unforgettable moment is that working as a team is not as beautiful as we think, working as a team requires a lot of sacrifice. As you know, people will easily point a finger to others when under pressure. Actually the rule is when one of the team members points a finger to others, the team will be disqualified. We always believe when we point a finger to others, we need to know that the other 4 fingers are pointing to ourselves.
One of the teams was actually unable to deliver the animation, only able to deliver 1 image. And of course they would have lost, but this is the most interesting part, the team still continued to work on the project, and finally created another 1 image and 1 animation. And this team is the one that created this BORN NEO. Here we can learn that it's ok to fail, but it shouldn’t stop you to keep doing what you love. The challenge only stops when you said so and they didn’t stop before they delivered 1 image and 1 animation.
Well, you know how proud I am with my team.
Fox Renderfarm: How long have you been in the visualization field? Who inspires you most in this industry? Could you briefly introduce your career story?
Reinaldo: On November 3, 2004, my family factory was razed by fire and left me with $100, 000 debt. And then I built my furniture workshop, then in 2008 I learned 3D to present my design to my client. And I deeply fell in love with 3D ever since.
My career started when I got my first award, Visualization Pro of the Week from CGarchitect, and that was in January 2011. And in March I established 2G Studio with my business partner Evan Mandala. Somehow we got lots of exposure, in 2012 one of my renderings got awarded by Ronen Bekerman, the reinterpretation render of Starbuck by Kengo Kuma and that work skyrocketed my name in this industry. And Evan’s work got Visualization Pro of the Week from CGarchitect. One of our works was also selected to be in the 3D World magazine. And in 2013-2014, CHAOS group chose me to be guest speaker for their Asia Pacific V-Ray Community Meetings and Siggraph Asia in Hongkong. In 2014, Jeff asked me to be one of the 3D awards judges.
Master Bedroom PIK © Reinaldo Handaya
(Won Visualization Pro of the Week from CGArchitect, January 2011)
Reinterpretation render of Starbucks by Kengo Kuma © Reinaldo Handaya
(Awarded by Ronen Bekerman, 2012)
House La Invernada © Evan Mandala
(Won Visualization Pro of the Week from CGArchitect, 2012)
Most of my clients both direct clients and other 3D studios were coming from CGarchitect, and that is why I strongly believe that CGarchitect is the place where talents meet the clients.
I was inspired by lots of people, not just one. But the one person that gives me a lot of influence is Jeff Mottle. It's not because CGarchitect Visualization Pro of the Week started my debut in this industry, but I can see that Jeff built CGarchitect not for himself, but to help others in this industry. Somehow it resonates with me a lot, since I also love to help others to learn 3D. And I established 2G Academy in 2013 with the spirit “helping others”. In 2017, I learned from Simon Sinek, why you do what you do is the most important thing, and I learned money is only a result from what you do.
Jeff Mottle
President/Founder, CGArchitect
2G Academy: https://www.2gacademy.com/
Simon Sinek
Author/Motivational Speaker
Fox Renderfarm: What is the development vision for 2G Studio? Any new projects or plans that you can share with us?
Reinaldo: The development vision for 2G Studio itself is definitely to provide the best marketing tools for our clients both developers and other 3D companies that work with us shoulder to shoulder. However we also have other developments outside the production, which give back to the community. We have our educational platform, 2G Academy and we want to give back to the community. We started a new movement in Indonesia when the lockdown happened in March 2020, we call this movement AVIS ID, meaning ArchViz Indonesia. We are aware the lockdown will affect lots of Indonesian 3D artists. Since Indonesian ArchViz artists' quality is pretty stuck, it is the time to focus on improving the rendering skills when the world stops spinning. We share free tutorials on our YouTube channel, do free portfolio reviews for Indonesian 3D artists. And we also did business and mindset talks and open for the public, we did this consistently till now.
We also follow our government program “Bali Kembali” meaning Bali is back, since Bali is a tourism island. We live in Bali and we love Bali so much. And we want to promote Bali through ArchViz. We are still working on this project and we choose 3ds Max and V-Ray to do this project, and we are also going to work on this project with our students. It is going to be epic, lots of still images and animations. And this is not for our personal benefit, but for a greater cause, we also want this industry to be aware about Indonesia as one of the best in this ArchViz world, and also want to break the stereotype that outsourcing to Asia is low cost.
The upcoming movement is following the CGarchitect movement, Women in ArchViz. Our version is Kartini in ArchViz, as you know there are lots of women that are not exposed in this industry. Why we call it Kartini is because Raden Adjeng Kartini is an Indonesian heroine and she is a symbol of women's right movement in Indonesia. This project is all about women in ArchViz in Indonesia, and we are also surprised that around 40% of our students are women.
Sanctum © 2G Studio
Fox Renderfarm: As the founder of 2G Studio, you established the leading 3D ArchViz Company in Indonesia, so do you have any views and prospects for the development of this industry in Indonesia?
Reinaldo: It is very challenging, having been in this industry for years, we’ve only worked with 1 local client. The reason why it is challenging is because in Indonesia we don’t have any belief in products labeled “Made in Indonesia” and this is happening in every sector not just ArchViz. Most big developers in Indonesia send inquiries to other 3D companies outside Indonesia, because they don’t believe there is a company in Indonesia that can produce high quality images. So definitely more time is needed to build the trust. As 2G Studio itself never tried to work with locals, we know the problem, that is why we always aim to work with international clients. All the movements that we build, and all the architectural talks we did every Saturday by inviting architects in Indonesia to share their thoughts, is also to build a strong community. Definitely it's not a quick result that we are chasing after, it is a journey, and for a good cause.
Fox Renderfarm: As an outstanding 3D Artist and architect, do you have any advice for the young artists in ArchViz Industry?
Reinaldo: We can say that this industry is easy to make money while we are doing what we love. Most people in this industry are artists, either architects or interior designers, and most of us here is because we are introverted people that enjoy our time when we do what we love. But this comes with a cost, and what happened in Indonesia is that most people don’t know anything about business and the art of negotiation, don’t know how to add value and end up slashing the price and racing to the bottom. Racing to the bottom will always happen in any kind of industry, Arch viz is not exceptional. The only way to get out from the red ocean is learning about business and marketing. Business and marketing are the art itself with a different form. It is also the same when we learn about rendering, rendering is a journey, it needs time, business and marketing also need time, and learning about these 2 things will help us overcome our own fear.
2G Studio: https://www.2gs.co/
2G Academy: www.2gacademy.com
