Interview with Wawa Sensei: How Elestio Powers a Full 3D Web Dev Teaching Stack

If you’ve watched Elestio’s official YouTube tutorials on deploying open-source apps and platform overviews, chances are you already know Wawa Sensei. But beyond the voice behind the screen, Wassim (aka Wawa Sensei) is also a 3D web developer and the creator of the React Three Fiber Ultimate Guide, one of the most complete courses to learn professional-grade 3D development using React & Three.js.

In this interview-style article, we sat down with Wawa Sensei to explore how he’s using Elestio across his content creation workflow — from deploying 3D apps, to hosting his own course platform, and even managing freelance invoices.

🧑‍🏫 Elestio: Wawa Sensei, thanks for taking the time! For those who may not know your full scope of work — could you give us a quick intro?

Wawa Sensei: Sure! I’m a French 3D web developer based in Japan. I teach people how to build immersive 3D web experiences using React Three Fiber, and I run a YouTube channel where I share tutorials about 3D web development.

The skills I developed for video content creation and my past experience with Elestio founder Joseph led me to do weekly videos for Elestio's YouTube channel in which I explore Open Source Software.

Outside YouTube, I do freelance work with Three.js and React, and I built my project-based course React Three Fiber Ultimate Guide — which takes you from the basics of 3D web development to more advanced topics like shaders, physics, and VFX.

🚀 Elestio: Awesome! Let’s talk infra — how does Elestio fit into your content-creation stack?

Wawa Sensei: It’s actually a key piece. I use Elestio in three different ways:

• Deploying 3D projects built in tutorials
  Every time I create a new video that walks students through building an interactive 3D scene, I deploy the finished result using Elestio's CI/CD pipeline. It’s fast, reproducible, and makes sharing project demos super easy — no manual setup or server headaches. All of them run on the same server, helping me keep costs low.
• Hosting my own course platform
  My entire course platform — built with Next.js, React Three Fiber, and Stream for video delivery — is self-hosted on Elestio. I also use Cloudflare + R2 for storage/CDN. Elestio made it painless to go from dev to production. Every time I push on the main branch, the CI/CD pipeline builds my project and deploys it seamlessly.
• Running Invoice Ninja for freelance work
  I also do freelance 3D web dev, and I use Invoice Ninja, self-hosted on Elestio, to handle my quotes, invoices, and payments. Again, setup took minutes — and it saves me a bunch in SaaS fees.

💡 Elestio: Why go the self-hosted route for all of this?

Wawa Sensei: I like full control over my stack. With Elestio, I can self-host and customize exactly how I want, without sacrificing simplicity. Most “easy deploy” platforms fall short when you need real flexibility (SSH terminal access, switch server, upgrades, ...) — but Elestio gives me managed hosting with full control, so I get the best of both worlds.

Plus, for someone teaching others how to build production-ready apps, it’s great to showcase the exact tools and hosting setup I use myself.

📚 Elestio: Final question — what’s next for your course and how can people check it out?

Wawa Sensei: I’m always adding new lessons — covering things like shaders and advanced techniques. The latest chapter released is about VFX, you can discover it here: React Three Fiber Ultimate Guide - VFX Introduction lesson

And of course, keep an eye on Elestio’s YouTube to discover new Open Source Software every week!

🧩 Wrapping Up

Whether you're a solo dev, a course creator, or a freelancer juggling multiple projects — Wawa Sensei’s story shows how Elestio can help you own your stack without the friction.

From CI/CD for demos, to hosting full platforms, to open-source tools like Invoice Ninja — it's all possible with one provider.