How pop culture can provoke conversation: Meet Vince Ibay’s TikTok-inspired 3D animations

It’s Nice That: You have such a brilliant and recognisable aesthetic in your work, it’s so full of personality and super well executed at the same time. You use photogrammetry and motion capture AI to create your 3D animations, can you tell us a bit more about these technologies? Why do you enjoy working with them over other mediums?

Vince Ibay: Thanks so much! Photogrammetry is basically 3D scanning without a scanner. I use my phone and take lots of pictures around an object or person from all different angles. I then upload these pictures to a photogrammetry software such as Agisoft, which essentially stitches the pics together into a 3D model (think of it like flatpacks). This is then ready to be transferred into Blender where I do all the editing and colouring of a character.

I learnt VFX as a teenager (on After Effects, Premiere and Sony Vegas) which was my gateway into 3D animation. Back then there were only a few tutorials available, mainly from Andrew Kramer on YouTube and online forums. Nowadays there's so much information out there for free. I use Blender for my work, primarily because it has a large community constantly posting help. I’ve learnt techniques such as motion capture and photogrammetry all from YouTube tutorials. I think it’s so crazy how we can now do 3D animation on a laptop anywhere, compared to previously where you needed to be at a large studio to learn such things.

Blender is an easy and quick way to transfer something from the physical world into the digital, rather than modeling it manually. Of course the results might not be as polished, but I like the unique imperfections you get with photogrammetry models.

I use Deep Motion for motion capture which is an AI powered body tracker. Basically you can insert a video of someone doing an action which is then transferred to your 3D characters, making them come alive. This makes the process of animation less time consuming and it is also cheaper than buying a motion capture suit. The movements sometimes come out a bit janky, but it still provides a solid base that can be edited. I enjoy working with these mediums as they don’t need large productions behind them. As these tools get better over time, I’m excited to see the different ways in which people use them.

INT: The characters in your work seem to resemble yourself, what intrigues you about using your own image in your work?

VI: The characters are definitely based on me visually, primarily just because of ease of use. It also avoids the implications of attaching a critical subject to someone else. I don’t necessarily see them as overtly autobiographical but rather a reflection of the content that I would most likely engage with, or the content that is easily sold to me. I can certainly relate to the characters and some of them express parts of my personality, but I see them more as vessels that have collected curated trends. I want to portray them as symbolic pieces of our digital cultures.

INT: If you had to pick a favourite project from the past year, which one are you most proud of and why?

VI: My favourite will have to be my graduate piece Dante, Jocko & Hugo which was shown at the Camberwell Space Gallery. I feel that I really hit my stride at the final push of the year and I got to release everything into this project. It also marked a beginning, where I found my creative voice that I truly enjoyed and felt comfortable in.

Jess World also has a special place in my heart because it was the first experiment where I nailed the process together with my girlfriend (my muse for the models). It was a long summer project, but we had a lot of fun figuring all the 3D things out, which I think is expressed in the video.

INT: You mentioned in an artist statement that your work questions the liberating capabilities of the internet. Can you tell us a bit more about this concept and how you hope to explore this in the future?

VI: The internet is such a powerful and democratic space that we should all collectively steer towards the benefits of humanity. It has completely changed the geography of seeing things, with the power of online media globalising our interactions with each other.

The global pandemic has rapidly transported more of our lives into the digital realm and I think it is important to explore the early ethics and cultures the internet incubated, and also look into the utopian ideals it originated from. Things such as surveillance capitalism on social platforms, the rise of the alt-right from the culture wars, and the new influencer economy, are all things I try to dive into.

As digital practitioners, we should try to have a conscious awareness of operations such as data harvesting as the liberating capabilities of the internet are sometimes used to influence dependency upon it. I intend to address questions such as “what kind of judgments are built into these systems? Who are they benefitting and at whose expense?” My ambition for the future is to keep creating visual narratives and experiences that are receptive to this coming generation of digital natives.