Kangai's Story
One of my deep and abiding loves is for sci-fi and fantasy entertainment. I have always found it fascinating that entire worlds can be designed and created by teams of software engineers and animators working together, bringing stories to life in ways that would never have been possible were it not for advances in technology. For instance, one of the best examples of what CGI and software engineering can do is in the creation of the Alita character in the movie "Alita: Battle Angel".
You may be wondering how this connects to who I am and what I want to be as a software developer. In short, I absolutely love sci-fi and fantasy entertainment as it helps me boost my imagination as I am a creative. I absolutely love the idea of creating something with my hands that didn't exist before. To that end, I've worked hard to perfect my craft as a makeup artist over the past decade, living and working in Nairobi. At the same time, I've been working as a freelance visual content strategist, working with brands locally and around the world to design their social media content.
Both these lines of work came to an abrupt halt once the pandemic hit, and my income has taken a huge hit as a result. Inasmuch as this was not desirable for me (and the entire globe as well), it forced me to really think about what I want to do going forward and where I want to invest my time.
You see my work as a makeup artist has made me adept at understanding faces and features of all skin types, tones and textures. I understand how different light affects final imagery and video, and I'm well versed in facial features and how they can be changed with different colours, highlights and contours, and with blending and precision placement of product. And so when I watch movies with computer-generated characters, I find myself drawn to how those characters were created in the first place, and what I would have done to make them look and feel more life-like.
I've done a lot of research into what goes into the design and creation of various CGI characters, and one interesting aspect is how often-times new software has to be written to properly light their faces to make them look that much more realistic. I find this aspect of coding immensely interesting and attractive, and my dream is to transition into being a full-stack developer so that I can finally merge my curiosity and my talent into a fulfilling career.