This is a transcript of a talk recorded at PI Apparel in Vietnam by Cameron James Wilson, CEO of The Diigitals. The full talk can be viewed here.
00;00;01;13 – 00;00;27;10
Unknown
Hi, I’m Cameron James Wilson. I’m CEO of The Diigitals and creator of the world’s first digital supermodel studio. I’ve had the pleasure of presenting at several different PR panels around the world before COVID and I’m really, really excited to be here today to present to you kind of just an introduction into the rise of Shudu and kinds of virtual influencers all together.
So who is shooting? Shudu, who is my creation, my baby, who came into the world in 2017? And at the time I didn’t really know what I was doing. So I was a fashion photographer for ten years and I wasn’t enjoying it. You know, I wasn’t was an happy with the work that I was creating. I felt fashion photography was an industry in decline.
You know, it was budgets were being cut, corners were being cut. Photography was no longer valued in the same way that it was when I started my career. So I was looking for something different, something else. And I fell in love with 3D programs like Marvelous Designer and a program called DAZ 3D and started to create little images, little pieces of art that went viral online.
So Shudu now has almost a quarter of a million followers. She’s been in every magazine you can probably possibly think of, and she’s done campaigns with the likes of Louis Vuitton and Ferragamo. She just recently did something with Charles and Keith. So she’s working nonstop, which is amazing. As a supermodel should. When I created she to, like I said, I didn’t have any idea of what I was getting myself into.
But little did I know I was kind of stumbling into the world of 3D fashion. But also I found myself kind of in the center of a lot of controversy. People had never seen a virtual influencer before. What did this mean for the future of modeling? Is she going to replace models? You know, is she going to replace makeup artist, hair stylist?
What does this mean for the future of the fashion industry? And little did I know I sparked kind of this huge conversation with this image here of shooting. So this was the first image I ever created of shooting. And I posted it online and it became a viral sensation. It was shared around the globe by the likes of Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks.
And it was just an incredible feeling at the time. Again, I was just starting out in 3D. This was only after three or four months of learning 3D programs. I had created this image, so I knew that I was on the right track after starting shooting and kind of running her page for a while, I thought about how we could collaborate with brands.
So using virtual models to collaborate with makeup brands and what that could mean for the future of fashion visualization. So I chose the brand Fenty and recreated kind of like an advertisement for them, which they then reposted and got over a quarter of a million likes on their page before they realized she wasn’t real and shut it down.
So it didn’t last very long. But people seem to love the image. It was very, very engaging and had tons and tons of comments underneath people trying to figure out what is shooting. Is she real? Is she not? And we were starting to see that digital models and virtual influencers were incredibly engaging characters on social media. People reacted very strongly to that imagery and it has a very high quality of post compared to real influencers.
So they were outperforming by a long, long way. Real people. This was the first collaboration between Shooter and a real model. So the model on the right is an Australian model called Aja, who I never met before, and I was thinking about creating real models in 3D and how that could mean that their career could be worldwide and global without ever having to leave their house.
Aja, who is in Australia, you know, she’s she’s never really modeled before, could then travel around the globe as a 3D model and pose wherever she wanted to in campaigns with she do or whatever she wanted to do. So thinking again about the future of modeling, what would this mean for models would erase them or would it open opportunity for them?
I think it really, really depends on the intent behind the creation. This was our first collaboration with an editorial for WWT, and we worked really closely with Harlow 3D to produce this editorial. They did an amazing job recreating the garments extremely faithfully, and then we dressed Chuter and put her in this kind of desert situation, and it was the first time that anyone would have ever done a fashion editorial in 3D completely without leaving, leaving a computer.
You could have a model that was in the middle of a desert somewhere. And it really, again, just presented what were the possibilities of the future of fashion if you didn’t have to fly around the world to create these beautiful, beautiful visuals? You know, this is an incredibly unsustainable way of producing imagery and this showcased the possibilities of what could be done with 3D programs like Flow, 3D.
We’ve also worked with makeup artists. So again, thinking about careers, how will they change? How will they develop? Working with famous makeup artist Sir John, who’s worked with Beyonce. So thinking about what is what will his career look like in the future. So he provided us with a face chart and we put that face to recreated that make up onto shooter, showcasing that creatives still will have a place within this industry.
It’s not going to erase anything, but it will change the way we work with them. And it’s important that people understand this because there was a huge fear of anything technological. As soon as something technological comes along like this, people back away and think this is going to take jobs away, this is going to remove opportunity. And it’s important that we reassure people that this is actually going to create more new new opportunities, new positions, new jobs, and also remote positions as well.
For makeup artists, you have to live in London or a city or something to be working constantly. But this presents the opportunity of actually being able to work anywhere in the world and produce incredible editorial and fashion imagery. This was another shoot that we did, this time with Tiffany and Co and Vogue Australia, and this was the first time that we blended shoe with a real model.
So we actually did a real life photoshoot with a model and we layered a shoe over the top to create this incredible mixed reality, kind of hyper real photo shoot. Here’s the real model, and I wanted to showcase again what is the future of modeling? Where will models be positioned in this new future of virtual and 3D? You know, will they be completely erased or actually, do we still need them?
Do we still need that human element to kind of brings you and characters like shoot to life? It’s really, really important in shoot Use case where there is a lot of criticism of shooter due to the fact she is a dark skinned woman in fashion and for dark skinned women in fashion, it’s very, very difficult for them to have opportunities for modeling and and things like that.
So it’s very important that we reassure people that this is presenting new opportunity and not taking anything away from the community that she represents. So I had the chance to work with Baumann very, very early on in my career, and they approached me and said that they wanted to create their own virtual influencers. So up until this point I’d really just been doing it for myself, you know, just creating these characters here and there for me.
And this was the first time that I’d worked with a client to create two characters for them, and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about the way that other people see beauty. You know, when you talk to somebody and you say, you know, I want a smaller nose or this or that, their idea of what that means can be totally different to yours.
So that was a huge learning curve when it came to creating these two models for Baumann, you know, learning about how to describe to someone different, different features, you know, eyes and nose and lips, you know, how to describe to someone, how to visually communicate what they want and, you know, how how can I deliver that? But Margot and C were very successful, and this is one of the very, very first fully CGI campaigns for a high fashion label.
There was also Louis Vuitton several years before, but that was with a character called Lightning from Final Fantasy. And this was just when we were starting to see 3D being picked up more and more around this time, you know, people were really starting to utilize 3D in the design process and think about the potential that it would have for gaming and the metaverse.
You know, this is way this is years before the metaverse, but people were starting to see the potential of where these 3D assets could go. Could they monetize these 3D assets? You know, how how can we actually utilize 3D itself without any physical garments at all? This was to do at the on the red carpet, which she was actually the first virtual character on a red carpet ever in the world, which is incredible as a hologram, this project was something of a real passion project as well.
They approached us. They wanted this done in a month. The turnaround was crazy. We had to transfer Shooter from 3D into Unreal and then project her on the red carpet as a hologram. So this utilized something called hollow gauze and people could then stand next to her pose and get their photo with her, which was something really, really incredibly ambitious, but also something that I was so confused as to why nobody has done this before.
You know, you would think that Elsa or the Minions or something would have appeared on a red carpet many years before. But actually this was one of the very first times you can see here that we worked with a fashion model channels to provide the motions for shooter, which again highlights just how different modeling will be in the future, you know, the different ways that models can be involved in this project.
And that is still reliant on humans to generate these motions for the future. However, once you have these motions, you can then apply them to any digital model after that. So you only have to capture them once and then next thing you know you can use it on on every model. So it’s all about building a bank of assets.
This was shooting for a and again, we were working with a real fashion model. However she turned up to the shoot. They the client absolutely loved her. The celebrity talent had kind of let them down and they were really unhappy with them. So instead they chose to use Shooter and her muse is what we call them Misty for the campaign, which was awesome.
We actually saw Tutu for the first time posing alongside the model that played her. So a really, really great campaign. Misty went on to have a really great relationship with Alice, again, showcasing opportunity, how we can create opportunities for models. This was a Samsung campaign that we created, and this this concept is all about showing the people involved in the project.
So the models that you see next to shoot you on the left, on the right are what we call muses. So they are the models that stand in a shooter. So they would actually usually be shooter in the image. But here they play themselves and they’re all kind of together. It’s a really, really sweet concept that I really, really loved.
And the results were incredible. This was one of the first times we used a video with shooter. We actually used a technique where we kind of almost deep faked shooter’s face onto the model, which at the time was kind of a little bit ahead of its time. It was very, very difficult to do. So It was a bit of a challenge, which is why it’s so short.
But again, just kind of like pushing the boundaries, trying out different technologies. You know, how is machine learning going to affect virtual models, you know, trying to kind of mix everything together, everything that’s kind of going on. This was our first full fashion show. This was for Operation Miami Swim Week. This was all done digitally and it was an extensive undertaking.
It was a lot of hours of rendering and simulation. We created this entire kind of catwalk scene, all of the lighting, the environment details, obviously the models. And it was just a huge, huge project. You know, we didn’t really realize when we were getting into it just how long rendering it would be, let alone, you know, everything else that goes into it.
You know, the computers whirring 24 hours a day, trying to produce all of the images to make an animation like this. And that’s something that people need to kind of understand as well as it’s not just about kind of creating the images. It’s about producing them, you know, having the computer actually spit them out in a way. So the power of the virtual influencer, so all of those projects and all of the projects that we’ve done since then have taught us so much about the potential that these virtual influencers have.
You know, how are they going to how are they going to be in the future? You know, are they going to still be just as entertaining? What we’ve seen is that the area has become extremely competitive. So being a virtual influencer now is just not enough. You know, before, when there were only a few, you could you could start an account as a virtual influencer and you would see thousands of followers come just because it was a virtual character.
Now there are actually thousands of these characters on social media, so you need a viewpoint, you need a position, a voice, something special that makes your character stand out. This is all of the media. We’ve been in tons and tons of media and done tons and tons of PR, but as I said, this was kind of more at the beginning, you know, at the beginning you literally had to do any project and people would pick it up and write an article about it.
Whereas now there’s so many kind of virtual models, it really needs to be something specific. You know, there needs to be an edge to it. There’s still a lot to be done, but it has to be thought about, it has to managed well and, you know, really kind of considered about what the kind of point of the character is.
So just a few kind of interesting facts about the engagement, the post quality, four times the post quality, so that actually outperforming real influencers four times over, which is incredible. The audience is incredibly young, so it’s people who are interested in technology, people who are interested in fashion and kind of targeting those who are also interested in things like the Metaverse and Web 3.0.
So again, I mentioned the muses and the importance of the muse shouldn’t be shouldn’t be kind of, you know, dismissed at all. These muses are incredibly important to the narrative of the characters and kind of having a character that actually is successful because these virtual influences are very still very controversial. We’ve seen recently with the Lens, the AI app, lots of people from social media having a backlash against artificial imagery and generated imagery.
How can we show showcase that actually there is a human element behind these artificial creations? So here are some of the models that we’ve worked with, and they all stand in a shooter. When shooter is booked, they get paid, they get credited. And this is really something that I think should be the standard for virtual influencers throughout the industry, Unfortunately, isn’t a lot of virtual influencers.
You see will pretend to be real. They will pretend to be AI, which they’re not. They will not credit the models behind them and they kind of tend to keep everything secretive, which is something that I don’t believe in. I believe in transparency and being open and kind of educating people about this space. I fear that it has the potential to be misleading.
You know, I fear it has the potential to damage beauty standards even further. You know, and I think this is something that we have to be incredibly responsible with. You know, the know every technology is just amazing. And wow, you know, we actually have to think about the repercussions this might have. And if you want to get involved in something like virtual influencers being responsible and thinking about how to make a positive impact, using virtual influencers.
So it comes down again to authenticity. You know, how can a virtual character that is fake be authentic? And it’s really about having an authentic voice, having an authentic point of view, having a having an authentic intent. And we do that, which you do by by working with a writer called AMA Baidoo, who helps us to kind of see shoot you from her point of view, her community’s point of view, engaging with her community, having someone from her community represent her, having that voice, that’s incredibly important.
If you create your character all of a sudden community, it’s incredibly important to engage with that community, not just project your image of what that person looks like or what their voice would be like. So this is something that we’ve actually created a couple of times this year. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Unilever Magnum to create our who represents a community of female cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast.
And I also had the pleasure of making Kami, who is the world’s first virtual influencer with Down’s syndrome. So I created Kami with Down’s Syndrome International and Fortnum, Fortnum and HBOS and forth in Singapore, and we really, really wanted to challenge gaming the metaverse to be more inclusive. You would think that something as futuristic of the metaverse was very diverse and inclusive.
But what we found was that actually it wasn’t, you know, there aren’t options to create characters with disabilities, characters that are bigger, you know, characters with Down’s syndrome. They were completely excluded from this space. So anybody that wanted to kind of be a part of this space, you know, they weren’t being represented. And I found that something is incredibly problematic.
This is something that I learned during this process. So to create Kami, we actually utilized over 100 different women with Down’s syndrome. I was sent all of their photos and I compiled them into one face. So I laid them on top of each other to create an image that represented all of these women. And I thought that that was incredibly powerful.
I didn’t just sit there and imagine what Kami would look like, you know, or create what I saw a person with Down’s syndrome looked like. I utilized real metrics, real people to create Kami in a way that removed beauty bias because no matter what, if I was to create Kami, there would be some kind of subconscious beauty bias that led me to make certain features or do certain things.
And I, I think it’s really important that we recognize that within our self and remove ourselves from that process. So here are some of the incredible women that are represented by Kami, and it’s a project that I absolutely fell in love with during the process. The incredible stance that Kami has is something that I feel like people shouldn’t back away from.
When I get asked to create a virtual influencer by clients, they often want somebody that represents everyone you know, they want somebody who is a little bit Asian, a little bit black, you know, a little bit ambiguous, you know. And I find that incredibly problematic because you end up with a virtual influencer that has no point of view.
You know, it doesn’t really represent anyone. Nobody can relate to that character. But actually creating a character like Kami, who has a very strong stance, really, really says something about about your character and about the point of view of your kind of company. So here are some of the content I would create with Kami. Again, it was really, really fun.
We had a model with Down syndrome pose as Kami, and the day was just just really, really incredible. You know, they had lots of fun and it was supposed to be something that involved the community and brought the community together and showcased the real people with Down’s Syndrome so that people could start to relate through social media to these people and kind of understand the diversity behind, you know, what these people are up to, what they’re doing, the kind of careers that they have, just improving awareness all around.
This is Kami with an artist, Charlie French. Again, just just raising awareness, profiling and being a great kind of spokesperson for the community. And it’s really, really amazing to be able to produce kind of a character that can really stand for the community by representing them in a really positive way again. So like I said before, you really, really need a stance if you’re producing a virtual character right now, it’s it’s not good enough to just be virtual.
You know, you really need to be saying something about the metaverse, about Web 3.0, How can we make a positive change? And there is still so much change that is needed within this space, within the metaverse, improving diversity, bringing more people of color into this space, bringing more people with disabilities into this space. So really utilizing this technology now to represent underrepresented people.
So hopefully I didn’t go through that too fast. There wasn’t a timer, so I don’t know. So I don’t know if we have some time for some questions. So can you apply makeup and clothes? Really? So my process, I actually use clay 3D for what it’s good at, which for me is cloth simulation. So I actually don’t use clay 3D for rendering.
I think there are many other programs that are great for rendering and I think we should be utilizing the programs that are best for what they do in the movie industry. You need to learn about ten different programs and plug ins and all kinds of things to produce the kind of images that you see in the movies. But for some reason within fashion, people are very, very scared of learning new programs.
You know, they they want a program that does absolutely everything, you know, avatars, class, simulation, rendering. And that’s just unfortunately not the reality of it. You can apply makeup, include 3D, I think, through the texturing and things. It’s just not how I would do it. I wouldn’t render enclosed 3D. I’m sorry if you guys are in 3D class.
I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t recommend. Do you for a character life behind the virtual model, how do you maintain the level of engagement and influence that she has on the community? I absolutely put character behind the characters that I create. However, I try to keep shooting just a little bit more mysterious. Try not to give too much away.
It’s just the way that I like to look at it. But to me and the people that I work with, we all know who shoot, who is you know, we know how like a good friend. And she she’s kind of has this personality that we all know what it is, but we like to keep it a bit mysterious, keep people guessing when it comes to shooting with other characters.
Of course, we don’t mind sharing their personality a bit more. The shooting special is the studio easy to use? I think it has a learning curve, but once you kind of understand it, unfortunately that studio, it’s an incredible program for creating avatars, but it has this very, very complicated system of kind of utilizing plug ins and shop bought content and marketplace content.
It really overcomplicate things, unfortunately. But I think it’s an incredibly useful program that I think people should think of when they’re creating avatars. We also have character creator and we also have metahumans, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend them. I personally, I’ve tried everything. I still think that’s the best way to create custom avatars. What’s next after making so Studio so famous and influential?
Like I said, we’re working on projects like Cami, so projects that have a real intent and purpose within the space. I feel like the metaverse has a long, long way to go before being as inclusive and representative of the real world as it should be. I feel like people’s focus when it comes to the metaverse is making these weird and wacky characters, but completely forgetting about the real life people that should be represented in the process.
You know, it’s all well and good creating these fantastical characters. But actually we should focus on on creating characters that represent us and and make people from certain communities feel included in this space. Because the people who are creating the metaverse, unfortunately, aren’t that diverse. You know, this is a space that is overwhelmingly white and it shouldn’t be you know, this this is a space that should be inclusive to everyone so that we hear all of their voices and see all of their influences within the space.
What does the digital company do? Do you have a big team? So we represent seven different virtual characters, which we then license out to brands to do kind of social media posts and things like that. We create all of the artwork around that. Depending on the post, we will hire 3D fashion people to kind of create clothes and things like that.
And then we also create virtual influencers for brands. So if anybody wants virtual influencers to represent their brand, we can handhold and take them through that process. It’s a very in-depth process. It’s very long process, but it is an incredibly rewarding one. Once you have a character that you can invest in for years to come. My team is very, very small.
It’s just me, my best friend and my dad, and we actually have achieved all of this just as us. But I also have a management team in L.A. who help with the contracts and all of the licensing because with virtual characters there’s a surprising amount of IP being shared and licensing that needs to be done. So it is a little bit more complex than you might first think.
Any time you go to Asia, any specific criteria you’re looking for as a partner brand while I’m here. So and I’m exploring here as well. And it’s very, very interesting the difference that we’re seeing between what, you know, Asian brands want from models and what Western brands want from models. So we’re seeing in the West, in the West, we’re seeing brands that want models that are really outspoken and quite controversial in terms of maybe their stance, Maybe they really stand for something like, you know, love is love or something like that.
Whereas in Asia, what we’re seeing is it’s a much more kind of a facade for a model, you know, something that is just very commercial, very branded with very little kind of outspoken voice. So so it’s quite a different kind of criteria for the modeling here, but definitely interested in the space and how we can kind of interact with some of the already established models here.
You know, I have friends here, Rosie Ikram, who is amazing in South Korea, Imma Dot gram who is based in Japan. They are two great friends of ours. Nothing to do with me. I didn’t create them, but we’re great partners with them all. So are you taking requests from lots of fashion brands? Can an unknown brand request you?
Absolutely. This is an open space for anyone to approach. Nothing is too too small if you want to say it that way. Nothing. Yeah, nothing is out of the question. It really depends from the brands as well what they’re aligned with. Maybe they have some messaging that’s really interesting. It’s not just all about kind of selling product as well.
What’s your plan of shooting or any virtual cats as we old I get asked this a lot, How do virtual characters age and they kind of age in their own way. You know they they develop over time so shoot you. When she first started, she was very, very smooth, you know, very wrinkled and not very much detail. But over time, she’s she’s actually gained a lot more detail.
We’ve upgraded her model several times. She now has a realistic human purport. When I first grade her, she was like some kind of Barbie monstrosity with, you know, four foot long legs. But now she’s much more human and her proportion so they age in their own way. They develop, they become better over time. And whether or not they get kind of wrinkles and creases, who knows?
You know, it’s really for them. They can they can age, they can go younger, they can go any direction that you want. So. So yeah. So if that’s the last question, then it’s been great chatting to everyone. I’ll be hanging around, so come speak to me if you have any other questions that you didn’t want to ask on the on there.
So so yeah. Thank you very much.
