I've been thinking a lot about what it means to exist digitally.
The first time that topic piqued my interest was in 2019, when I created ALANA within a digital fashion community. It didn't take long, and many designers wanted to dress her. This is when I realized a digital character can mean so much more than I originally anticipated. Eventually, ALANA became the unification symbol of a community I founded, and we continuously decentralize: The ALANA Project.
A bit later in that journey, The Fabricant asked me to lead a workshop on digital character creation for their community. In that process, a new character emerged, and soon they became part of ALANA's world as well. Every character I built, whether visually or through storytelling, seemed to be 'swallowed' by ALANA's world because it felt they belonged there.
ALANA and her world are what got me started to think about digital forms of self-expression. Of course, over time, I created my own Spatial avatar, but, in all honesty, I didn't put much thought into its styling. I won a Hugo Boss suit at one of their events, added pink hair and white glasses, and was basically done. It didn't seem important enough to spend more time on it.
And then something interestingly scary started to happen: Deepfakes; synthetic forms of media (images, videos, or audio recordings that are generated/manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to convincingly mimic real people or events). They had been around since about 2017, but with more end-user-facing AI applications emerging, they became more common.
While the most visible portion of these results is funny meme-like videos on socials, the larger and hidden portion is used in a very scary way. According to a 2026 UNICEF, ECPAT, and INTERPOL study, at least 1.2 million children across 11 countries had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year. These are only the visible numbers for kids. Considering that the study reveals that 90% to 99% of all deepfake pornography victims are women, the numbers of this novel form of abuse and exploitation seem sheer endless. The problem is not only that they were never given the right to consent to this, but even worse, adult women reflected in there are not even the beneficiaries of the business models behind all of it!
Roughly during that time, when all of this became a topic of public discourse, a friend sent me a list of the latest scams. Working with novel technologies naturally makes you more wary about digital security and safety. One of the scariest examples was a voice scam in which a scammer impersonated a family member (a daughter) to get the parents to pay a large sum of money. As I read more on the topic, I became crucially aware that, with all the data on the web about my face and voice, it is really easy for someone malicious to do the same to me. I didn't like it at all. Soon after, I discovered I already had an impersonator on X and also on Discord and Telegram:
This was a less creative and more scary moment that piqued my interest in the topic of digital identity again. I also asked myself whether that virtual version of me would eventually evolve into its own existence and what that might look like. If she has her own environment, how would that look and feel? Does she have a story from before she met me? In short, a face, a world, a story that isn't just content. Something that might outlive me and become something 'real.'
In the design and creator space, we talk a lot about personal branding, about avatars, about digital identity. I believe most of the time, what we all really wish to figure out is how to create an optimized version of ourselves that becomes a hook for an engaged audience we can build up on. Curated, Cropped, and in the end filtered. Not fully us, but close enough.
Whenever I was prompted by others to give this thought, I felt like a liar. Like someone who wouldn't be authentic if I were to pretend to just be 67.98% of my actual self. When I considered splitting my identity and sharing an optimized version through a virtual avatar, the story became an entirely different one.
So, on one long weekend, I sat down and created NOVA V 1.0 in Epic's Metahuman creator:
As I was constructing her, mixing and matching different ethnicities, and even creating her first Unlock Protocol-inspired outfit in Marvelous Designer, I realized once again that NOVA was never meant to be me in its entirety, but a version of me. She was meant to be partially herself and partially me, so she never has to perform, and neither do I.
The thought that stuck with me was the following: A virtual self isn't an escape from who you are. It's actually a really direct confrontation with it. I just wasn't aware of how much!
As you saw, NOVA Version 1.0 turned out to have quite a few Asian like features. Where did this come from, you might ask. The truth is, I have been a huge fan of different Asian cultural elements for a loooong time. It all started with Japanese animation and manga in the 90s, and eventually evolved in 2001 into Korean drama with Dae Jang Geum, or Jewel in the Palace. These days I feel a strong pull into Chinese fantasy series currently obsessing over Pursuit of Jade.
As I started working more with my first version of NOVA, I used a lot of ComfyUI to experiment with her. From little thought pieces to fully animated snips of telling a color story with her on TikTok. It was fun, real fun, and felt light.
// add some video links here or images of NOVA experimentation
Around Christmas, I decided now was a good time to experiment more with NOVA's 3D avatar, and that's when it hit me: I could export the mesh from Unreal Engine, but couldn't export most of the textures in a usable way. That was a bummer. After researching, I decided the best course of action is to redo NOVA in Character Creator to enjoy more freedom in where I bring her.
That said, on another long weekend, I sat down and started doing just that. While I originally composed NOVA from a place of genuine love for Asian culture, during the rebuild, I had to stop and ask myself: Is this admiration, or is this appropriation?
Sitting with that wasn't comfortable. But I think that's exactly why it mattered. Even love can overstep, and I didn't want NOVA to be built on something that made me doubt myself. So I changed direction. I think when I first built her, I confused being white with being Asian. The skin color may be similar, but it is not the same thing by far, which is what I realized in that moment. So instead, I let her look more like a white, Caucasian person.
// Showing a view of NOVA from within Character Creator
Not a realistic copy. More like an uncanny valley echo, as my friend Daria mentioned when I showed her NOVA Version 2.0. Now she is carrying my essence, but feels slightly off. The moment I switched directions mattered more than I expected. Something clicked, and NOVA stopped feeling like just a character I was designing and started feeling like a self I was discovering.
The process of designing NOVA taught me that the choices you make for a digital self can be both surprisingly honest and scarily dishonest. While I couldn't hide behind a client's brief it made me ask who is this other me really?
Now that her physique is finally set, I find myself asking more and more questions about her: Where does she live? What might be her favorite dish? Is she vegan like me? Would she like all the fashion pieces I have started lining up for her? Would she want to switch styles like a model, or does she have her own recognizable fashion identity?
In a way, I began to realize I was asking questions about myself, so I started answering them:
What is my favorite place in the world?
The only place on earth that ever let me calm down my brain has been a secluded island in the Maldives. This is what decided I will build NOVA her own Island Paradise.What food do I like?
I am a vegan, and I love everything that is plant-based and tasty, so this is what NOVA will also promote. Plant-based food is healthy and yummy after all.What fashion style does she like?
I like switching styles, but not the way a model would for shows. I like certain styles more than others, and there are elements that ring through in each of them. I love combining black with a highlight color. I think for NOVA I will be more experimental because, the truth is, I want to be more experimental but lack the confidence.
As you can see, many questions started to emerge about what I actually find beautiful. What feels like me versus what feels like who I think I should be? Where does inspiration end and identity begin? Whenever I started to feel stuck in that process, it occurred to me that it wasn't a technical problem but, in fact, a self-knowledge problem. I also came to understand that it is worth staying in that discomfort for a while to become more aligned with oneself.
A while ago, I started building something called InterSTELLAr Paradise in Unreal Engine. It is a virtual island I began developing for my game development portfolio, not even realizing I might have been subconsciously designing it for NOVA.
The plan is to pixel-stream it directly from my website so anyone can access it in their browser, in real time, with no downloads needed. Sadly, the original file broke, but now I have a new motivation to pick this project up again.
In fact, last Friday during my new streaming series "Design Alchemy," I started rebuilding the space and will continue to do so for the next few months until it is ready:
Which brings me to a quick announcement:
Design Alchemy is a new weekly livestream series exclusively happening on my TikTok channel. I am trying to prove that almost every problem has a solution, and that it can come from the principles of design. We are starting light with actual design problems and will eventually move into more complex social/society and system-solving measures.
In my first session, I had @lavanda.contrabanda with me, and we solved a digital fashion problem she had: trying to construct a corset in Marvelous Designer. In the second session and in today's third, we are rebuilding InterSTELLAr Paradise.
If you have a design problem you wish to discuss with me or even come on the stream for, let me know a few details through this form, and I will make sure to get back to you within a few days.
Design Alchemy happens now every Thursday, 8 pm EST
( I had to change the day from Friday to Thursday and will have to switch to 8 pm CET for the 16th and 23rd of April, as I will be traveling in Europe.)
🔔 Follow me on TikTok and turn on notifications so you won't miss an episode of Design Alchemy anytime soon.
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