Turning a 2D Illustration into 3D

I decided to turn one of my illustrations from 2020 into a 3D object. Now it's not just an image on a screen, but a physical item you can actually hold in your hands.

I worked on the model in my spare time, mostly as an experiment: what happens when a familiar image takes on volume? How does perception change when a flat drawing gains thickness and texture?

Working on the 3D version turned out to be surprisingly engaging. Along the way, I recalled what mattered in the original — the visual accents, how the composition was built. I first converted the image to vector, then imported it into Blender to adjust layers and depth.

I printed it using my Bambu printer. I didn’t have the exact same filament colors as in the original, so I improvised and matched them by eye. Still, it turned out pretty close. In person, it feels completely different — the relief, the reflections, the sense of mass all make it more tangible.

Now it sits on a shelf as a small bas-relief. Sometimes it's interesting to return to older works — not to redo them, but to interact with them in a different way.