This week’s Spotlight Artist is the ever-enigmatic London-based 3D motion designer tyronejkd digitizing dream states in Cinema4D and Houdini.
He has created work at some of the world’s top design studios for clients, including Barclays, Bayer, Starbucks, BP, BAT, Alienware, Seat, and Forward Festival.
The majority of his multi-faceted output focuses the viewer on his fascination with the realm of abstract simulations rather than real-world things, an aesthetic that he is continually iterating, refining, and self-educating to achieve.
MP: Can you tell me about your background as an artist?
TJ: I’ve always been into computers. I built my first computer when I was around 12. I studied computer animation and VFX in Leeds, and everything seemed to click. This was clearly the medium of art best suited to me as I’m not great at drawing. I’ve been creating digital art for about 8 years now, and there’s no going back.
MP: If I had to summarize your work, I might call it a murmuration of occasionally identifiable objects. What feeling do you work toward in your motion pieces?
TJ: Normally, I find some bit of inspiration in the real world or social media, then I roll with that. I never have a set feeling I’m going for. I just like to create things that are visually cool to me, and I’m constantly learning new approaches and methods of doing stuff.
MP: Your traditional art world influences offer a clue to what you may be trying to translate into 3D motion. I’m thinking in particular of the pieces “take the plunge,” “van gogh’s ear,” “intertwined,” and “delayed pointillism.” Can you tell me a bit about these pieces in particular?
TJ: I just fancied challenging myself to create some more abstract still pieces. I never think too deeply about the message behind pieces. I find it kind of nauseating when an artist tries to over explain their work. Let the art do the speaking. The process of creating these pieces was largely trial and error between different software until I got something I liked.
MP: Two things come to mind when I think of your work: your animated jelly swarms and your 3D portraits, like “The Ethereum Creator” and “The Bitcoin Creator.” But when I look through your work, I notice that portraits are the tiniest subset of your work. Were these pieces just intended as one-offs?
TJ: Yeah, they were just one-offs that I thoroughly enjoyed making. I find it more interesting to create work in the realm of abstract simulations rather than real-world things.
MP: Has the birth of the digital art market through NFTs affected your creative process in any way?
TJ: Nah, it’s stayed the same. My creative process has always been very manic. I have severe ADHD, so I constantly have like five projects on the go at once.
MP: If you could teach the world about one tiny corner of the totality of your artistic influences, what would you turn them on to?
TJ: Zomax (aka Cornelius Dammrich) is one of the best 3D artists out there. He created the splash screen for older versions of Cinema4d and always puts meticulous detail into his pieces.
MP: What’s your advice to artists just now entering the space?
TJ: Explore, learn, and try new things. Smart contracts have given us the opportunity to do things that aren’t possible in the conventional art world.
MP: What does the future hold for your artistic practice and NFT ambitions?
TJ: I currently have a sort of art pass thing going on – 250 tokens called “You got mail.” Each token gets the holder random art airdrops as and when I make them. Other than that, I’m just going to keep making art. That’s about it.
