Digital Art Is Making Moves on the Mannequin Market

26 Mar

GETTING A MOVE ON: Will digital artist Sam Shea — prized for his disquieting, liquid-like figures sometimes comprised only of limbs — disrupt the, ahem, staid mannequin market?

“I’m principally going to start out manufacturing all my 3D work in real life,” he said at an event Tuesday during Paris Blockchain Week, where he displayed a video clip of one in all his human-like creatures, its flesh stretching out within the wind, riding a horse across a beach. “The cool thing is my dad worked his entire life at a natural history museum, and his best friend made the mannequins.”

Shea, higher often known as Nude Robot, said his “surreal mannequins, like lucid dreamers” would offer a latest way for fashion brands to animate their designs — and offer gallery-goers something to gawk at besides a screen. “That’s what I’m working towards.”

He was amongst a couple of dozen digital artists assembled for the launch of Itak, a latest consultancy that helps brands navigate the brand new digital landscape and create immersive experiences with the assistance of cutting-edge technology.

Mado Scott, chief creative officer at Itak and one in all three cofounders, said the firm helps fashion and luxury firms step into the Web 3.0 world “while staying on brand, and while having the extent of craft they deserve as luxury brands.”

In line with her, the “touch of the artist” is essential, noting most employ video game and special-effects technology, together with AI, to create intricate, sometimes otherworldly visuals.

Indeed, artists like Shea, who studied fashion at Maryland Institute College of Art, is in a position to produce such compellingly lifelike digital effects because of his knowledge of material and costume design. “The best way you drape in 3D is strictly the way in which a tailor would,” he explained.

Unexplored Fields, a creative collective that has already done work for Lacoste and Dr. Martens, displayed a mesmerizing video still of a ruddy-faced young man in a mullet hugging the nose of a large yak, the camera panning slowly over his clothes: a leather jacket inspired by a 1982 design by Massimo Osti for C.P. Company, needle-felted trousers based on the motorcycle pants Swedish cops wore within the Nineteen Fifties, and sneakers inspired by a Balenciaga X Vibram collab.

The Roncier, a digital character created by creative collective Unexplored Fields.

No surprise that one in all the three cofounders of Unexplored Fields, Virgile Brosa, studied fashion also. He tweaked the unique designs and experimented with various textures. “3D is an excellent opportunity to do this, because you may relatively quickly change the design and have the result immediately,” he said.

The opposite cofounders of Itak are Massimo Moretti, whose background is in crypto, and Mariem Farhat, a Web 3.0 expert and marketing guru. Mado Scott was a finalist for the 2021 Andam Innovation Prize together with her firm Acid Rays, which creates virtual and digital identities for fashion labels.

Featured Posts