"It's All About the Face" with Terry Gates
The elite virtual avatar designer and veteran fashion photographer sits down with Rumfoords to discuss the photorealism versus stylized avatar debate and more.
As style, luxury, and beauty dissolve from the physical world into the digital world, a handful of artists are emerging as best-in-class.
Looking for the most detailed, lifelike and striking 3D faces in the future will no doubt bring luxury and beauty brands into the orbit of Terry Gates, the Australian photographer turned 3D avatar designer.
Rumfoords is beyond pleased to share the below piece of exclusive digital beauty content with our dear readers, coinciding with our sit-down and interview with Gates himself.
Is the future of 3D models more photorealistic or more stylized? Read on to find out.
Rumfoords: I was just reading your Vogue interview. How long has it been since you transitioned to photography to avatar creation?
Terry Gates: I started doing it about a year and a half ago. I still do photography when I can. I just did a 360-degree shoot for Vogue Singapore, the launch of Vogue Singapore. So I’m still shooting, I still do regular fashion and beauty and stuff. But I’m spending all my time learning 3D at the moment.
R: Why do you find yourself focussing so much more on the avatar work now?
TG: I’m just super interested in it. I think there’s a big future there. There seems to be a lot of interest in it at the moment. I think social media changed the industry a lot in the past few years so photography has become more difficult. It was just time for a change and to learn new things, so I packed up and moved to Vegas.
R: Who have you been making these avatars for?
TG: The first one that I’ve done was for Vogue Australia. I’ve created one now but I’m in the middle of negotiating a contract for a new one for a beauty brand. I can’t really talk too much about it. The rest of it has just been personal work and learning.
The avatars that I’ve created for my portfolio I just did to show what’s possible. All of those are DAZ models.
R: They’re gorgeous!
TG: But the more detailed stuff, which is what I’m learning now, is a much longer, more in-depth process and there’s a lot more different skills involved. DAZ is great because you don’t need that much technical skill but the other side of it you need a lot of technical skills or a small team of people who specialize in things like hair or textures or modelling or rigging or that kind of thing.
R: What do you get out of that avatar-creation process that you weren’t getting out of your photography work before?
TG: I’ve been doing photography for over 15 years. This is applying a lot of those skills in 3D, because once everything’s built and put together it’s kind of like doing photography but you control the modelling, you control the lighting. That part I really like.
I also do this 360-degree photography stuff. And so in 3D, using those skills, I can shoot lighting environments called HDRI, so having those skills helps in 3D.
So it’s an extension. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve seen that’s really photoreal. And having been on a lot of shoots, particularly beauty shoots, there’s like a whole team and so much money and time that goes into it, so it makes a lot of sense to do it in 3D where everything is customizable.
There’s still a long way to go in terms of photorealism and avoiding the uncanny valley. But most clients I’ve talked to so far are more interested in having a stylized character that doesn’t look photoreal because they don’t want to be seen as being deceptive. So they want it to be clear that it’s a 3D character.
R: How do you feel about the divide between photoreal avatars and more stylized avatars?
TG: I think there’s a place for a whole range, but I think the photoreal stuff will become more and more prevalent as the technology increases and things get quicker and easier to do.
But it’s coming to a point now where one person or a small team can make this one asset that you can use infinitely. So it makes sense as a brand, rather than paying models and photographers and a whole team and locations and stuff, to invest some money in the beginning to build something that you can re-use forever.
R: We’ve noticed that the more stylized avatars are really popping, and that the avatars on the photorealism side of the spectrum might not be the aesthetic that people are into yet.
TG: Yeah, because it looks like a photo. People would just think it’s a photo. But, yeah, I understand that. The two most famous avatars that I know of are Lil Miquela and Shudu are that same style. I know Miquela has evolved but I’m pretty sure Shudu and at least at the beginning Miquela were both made in Daz.
R: I love this avatar in your portfolio, the woman with silver makeup all over her face and blue and yellow hair. It’s beautiful.
TG: Ah, yeah. Thank you. That was just messing around, trying to get between different software packages. Substance Painter is really good for texturing, so I was just trying to figure that out.
R: Let’s talk about the piece you made for us. It’s a bit on the photorealistic side of the spectrum, isn’t it?
TG: It’s a little bit more but it’s still Daz. Yeah, I think that’s a little more photoreal than some of the other avatars but a lot of it comes down to lighting and texturing.
That’s the way I want to go, I want to learn and go that direction. And if you can do the photorealistic stuff you can do the stylized stuff super easily.
R: Do you hope that industry continues down that photorealistic path?
TG: I can see a use for both stylized and photorealstic. I’m focusing more towards beauty, doing close-up macro shots. Scrolling through Instagram, so many times you see a close macro shot of lips or lipstick or an eye with eye shadow, and it’s retouched so much it looks almost like the stylized avatar.
So I think it makes so much sense from a budget and a production standpoint for brands to do it in 3D rather than doing a new shoot every time you need a shot of lips.
With cosmetics and beauty, it’s all about the face.