photographer, deciding to test his abilities
as a CGI artist. “I was just practising my
3-D modelling skills,” he explains, pushing
a curtain of bleached blond hair away from
his face. “I wanted to see how realistic I
could make this person look.” He based his
first character, called Shudu, on a Barbie
doll. Wilson posted the completed render on
Instagram in April 2017 and was surprised
by the reception. As one viewer commented:
“Wait, so the model in these photos isn’t real
but a 3-D creation?”
Waif-like, with an elongated neck enclosed
in 17 glittering gold band necklaces, unblem-
ished skin and a strikingly dark complexion,
Shudu looked like the sort of fashion models
Wilson photographed in his daily life – and
soon became one, with an early collabo-
ration advertising the niche fashion label
Soulsky. One of Shudu’s images made its way
to Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty account, which
amplified her to a bigger audience. In August
2018, Shudu stood alongside two other new
digital influencers – Margot and Zhi – to
model for Balmain. “That was the first time
I thought, ‘Wow, I can actually make money
doing this,’” says Wilson.
Today, The Diigitals has a roster of seven
virtual models, including one man, Koffi,
who was created in January 2019. So why
have audiences warmed so readily to this new
breed of entertainer? Rob Cover, an assis-
tant professor at The University Of Western
Australia, who writes about digital cultures,
puts it down to three things: “The novelty ofThink “modelling” and you might think
of Paris, perhaps, or London or New
York. To a number of brands, another
place has recently appeared on that list: the
British seaside town Weymouth.
The Diigitals is located near Chesil Beach,
at the home of Cameron-James Wilson.
The company has worked with the likes
of Balmain and Ellesse on worldwide cam-
paigns and its point of difference is simple:
it’s the world’s first modelling agency for
virtual celebrities.
It’s the latest evolutionary step in a
trend that gained teeth last year when
Brud – the Los Angeles company behind a
computer-generated Instagrammer called Lil
Miquela, an avatar with 1.6 million followers- attracted $6m (£4.7m) of investment. She
wears digital versions of real-life clothes
and shows off pixel-perfect re-creations
of physical products. In May, she “kissed”
Bella Hadid in an ad for Calvin Klein. The
company is currently worth £98m and a
multitude of other start-ups are emerging - Fable (“the virtual beings company”), for
instance, and 1sec (a “virtual human plan-
ning and production” service). What once
looked like a gimmick is now big business –
and virtual personae are invading other forms
of media, stepping out of the constraints of
still photos and into video.
The Diigitals finds itself front and centre
of this movement, but the company’s origin
is grounded more in luck than judgement. It
all started with Wilson, a 30-year-old fashion
computer-generated imagery, the sophistica-
tion of the product and the use of humour
in stitching together a story.” For brands
it makes sense, too: you’re unlikely to get
negative headlines from a virtual influencer,
because they don’t exist outside the tightly
controlled world of ad campaigns.The day before we speak, Wilson started
working with a digital content creator
who will provide Shudu with a voice,
allowing her to do interviews and, eventually,
videos. This would thrust Koffi, Shudu and the
rest of The Diigital’s models into the small but
competitive arena of the “VTuber”. Virtual
YouTubers have dedicated followings in Japan
and increasingly so in the West. Videos star-
ring VTubers – of which YouTube says there
are more than 5,000 – were watched more
than a billion times between January 2018
and last May and 50 per cent more than
a year before. Like their real-life counter-
parts, VTubers tend to post traditional vlogs
explaining what they have been up to and
wander around cities (while superimposed
on real video). One of the most popular
English-speaking VTubers is Ami Yamato, a
computer-generated character who “lives in
London” and has nearly 150,000 subscribers.
“I would argue you can establish the same
connection with a VTuber that you would
with a ‘normal’ YouTuber,” says João Lopes,
an 18-year-old fan. “Even the most authentic
influencers craft their personality to be more
likeable.” Indeed, the unblinking artificiality
of this new wave of virtual celebrities is, it
might be argued, more honest than flesh-
and-blood celebrities who take care only to
present part of their personality on camera.
Brud’s website answers the question “Is [Lil]
Miquela real?” thus: “As real as Rihanna.”
The man behind The Diigitals agrees: “A
lot of it has to do with social media and the
highly edited world that it is,” says Wilson.
“We’ve become much more open to digital
imagery in general. I don’t think people are
averse to virtual models, because they’re so
used to seeing heavily Photoshopped images
on social media. It’s a cultural thing.”
It’s a bracing thought, but it shouldn’t come
as a surprise. We are able to feel emotional
connections to fictional characters in films,
television, books – even video games (just
ask anyone who has played the latest Red
Dead Redemption). This is just another form
of storytelling. The difference is that these
new characters may take on a life of their
own. The VC company Betaworks has report-
edly allocated $200,000 to finance start-ups
that will combine CGI celebrities with arti-
ficial intelligence. All hail your new social
media overlords.VIRTUALCELEBRITIES^are taking overyour feeds.But does it matterthat they areNOT REAL?Story by Chris Stokel-Walker09-19DetailsVirtual.indd 76 11/07/2019 15:24
72 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019