My name is Kirill, and I founded the architectural visualization studio cgistudio.com.ua in 2014, right when the armed conflict with Russia began in the eastern part of the country. Let me share a bit of backstory. In 2013, I was living a peaceful life in Donetsk / Ukraine, working as a designer at one of the city's architectural studios.
We were designing residential buildings, cafes, restaurants, and hotels, and we did quite a lot of design projects for apartments and public establishments. We were actively involved in the city's development, advocating for the construction of bike paths in the city center.
However, by the end of 2013, the political situation in Ukraine changed, and it became clear that it was time to move on. In early 2014, I left my job and started looking for orders for myself. A couple of months later, I realized that it was the right decision because my previous company worked for a couple more months and then closed down. I was proficient in 3D Max and produced decent apartment designs and architectural visualizations. Thanks to my skills in 3D and a good understanding of design, I never lacked orders.
However, there was another problem. Living and working in Donetsk became impossible as the city was already occupied by pro-Russian militants. Besides the collapse of banking and other infrastructure, there were constant shootings from heavy weapons. Another unpleasant fact was that you could only get cash on the Ukrainian-controlled territory, which required crossing the contact line and passing through several checkpoints, where anything could happen. So, after another such trip, the decision was made to evacuate to the controlled territory.
In 2015, I started with renting a small apartment in Dnipro, where my assistant and I worked for about a year and a half. In 2017, I moved to Kyiv, and the number of employees in my company increased by several people. In 2018, I decided to return to Dnipro and focus on training newcomers. The first training group consisted of three people.
For the first month, we taught the basics of 3D Max, and then those who passed the exam were taken on an internship with subsequent training. Following this system, we hired about 20 people over the year. In total, more than 50 people have been trained by us.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic began. Due to the pandemic, our team of 20 people had to downsize to 6 remote employees. Then, in 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion. Some of our employees went to the front lines, while others volunteered.
Therefore, in 2022, we had only 2-3 people on staff. Perhaps we wouldn't have been able to provide more work, especially when the number of orders in 2022 tended towards zero. Now, in 2024, the situation with the number of orders has improved significantly, so we are actively looking for new people to join our team and are optimistic about the future.
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