What to know
- Burlington-based artist Eric Godlow, originally from Winnipeg, turned to self-taught 3D animation after experiencing writer’s block as a musician.
- Using Blender and YouTube tutorials, he began creating nostalgic, early-2000s-style animated landscapes inspired by Toronto’s architecture.
- Each 10-second animation takes roughly 20–30 hours to complete, with careful modelling, lighting, textures.
- His animations have gained hundreds of thousands of views and strong audience reactions, prompting requests for more neighbourhoods and inspiring his long-term goal of developing an open-world video game set in Toronto.
A self-taught artist is showing the beauty of Toronto’s landscape through 3D animation.
Eric Godlow is a musician and artist from Winnipeg, who moved to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 2023. Since moving to the GTA, Godlow told Now Toronto he was becoming burnt out creatively as a musician, as he experienced writer’s block in songwriting.
“I still wanted to output something creatively, but obviously, being in a writer’s block situation with music, I defaulted to visual art,” Godlow explained. “I don’t have any background in art. I suck at drawing, so I decided to dabble in 3D modelling.”
As an art style that initially piqued Godlow’s interest, he says he would consume 3D animation on social media, before he opted to use Blender, a free animation developer, as well as Youtube to teach himself how to create landscapes of Toronto.
With his love for 2000s video games and their nostalgic art styles, Godlow began working on pieces that replicated the look in March 2025.
“I grew up in Winnipeg, so coming here, it’s a lot different in terms of architecture and even the way that the houses are–a lot of Victorian era houses– so, that really fascinated me…” Godlow explained. “I think it’s cool to show off Toronto, just because it’s a unique city with a lot of life.”
As a musician, Godlow has also incorporated his animation into music videos for his songs.
Godlow says it typically takes around 20 to 30 hours to create one 10 second 3D animation.
Most of the time goes into modelling everything from the ground up, and layering lighting, and textures. He says he even incorporated cultural easter eggs, like specific graffiti or artist stickers placed around the city.
Despite the time it takes to create, he says the time flies as he immerses himself into the work.
“It’s something I’m passionate about.”
Godlow, who also goes by his artist name emberlite on social media, has gotten over hundreds of thousands of views on his 3D animations across multiple platforms. He says the reaction has been very supportive.
“My only goal in this was to make art that resonates with people and to just let out my creativity, so I’m really glad that it found an audience and that people are loving it,” Godlow explained. “I’ve gotten a lot of messages saying that it reminds them of their childhood, or like they moved away from Toronto [and] now they want to come back after seeing these, just a lot of heartfelt messages.”
Godlow says he’s been getting many requests to create landscapes of different areas in the city. He’s working on his third neighbourhood animation for his next release.
He said he’s also already created the renowned McDonalds that resides at Queen St W and Spadina, a location that wasn’t significant to him but was to the people requesting the video.
“I moved away from Toronto almost 2 years ago. I miss the city a lot so whenever these come across my feed I feel back at home,” one TikTok user commented on the video.
A few other TikTok users expressed their desire for a Toronto-based video game that had the same graphics.
Godlow says he’s now learning game development with the goal to one day create an open-world video game that would allow users to walk around the city virtually.
“[Moving to the city] was the best decision I ever made. I love everything about it.”
