George Jasper Stone uses multiple softwares to build a post-modern world filled with nature and robots

Growing up in a small village the Midlands just shy of the Peak District, that’s where George Jasper Stone nurtured his creative mind. It was in this remote part of Derbyshire that he developed a close connection with the outdoors, which in turn led him to pursue fine at Falmouth University where he started to experiment with projection and installation. Upon graduation, however, he started work in the art department on the Netflix series, The Crown: “I was inspired by production design and began practicing technical drawing,” he tells It’s Nice That. Realising that these concepts were limited by the physical restrictions of materials and resources, that’s when he steered towards a medium that allowed him to freely create whatever he liked, without parameters.

That was George’s first venture into 3D. Then, he’d landed a job working at a CGI production studio in Borough called Treatment – an experience that he marks as influential on the work he creates today. “I was practically living in the studio space, spending days watching tutorials on Cinema4D,” he says, spending much of his time learning different techniques and developing his understanding of the medium. A process which very much evolved, until one day he started creating these absolutely chaotic compilations of environments, objects future humans. “It’s quite difficult to describe,” George says of his style, “but my process is primarily intuitive. Like a physical manifestation from from dream logic which can be primitive and crude.”

George now reflects back on his childhood spent in rural Derbyshire and, most specifically by the sea in Cornwall. On first glance you’ll notice that most of his pieces depict nature in some form or another, so it’s pretty clear that his past experiences have influenced the subject matter found within. The sea, forest or an “organic element” found in an environment are key players, while a comparatively different approach can be seen in the inclusion of machines, robots and “uncanny synthetic surrealistic environments”, plus outsider art, magic realism and sci-fi – “It could be characterised by constructing vignettes and scenes, that blend digital experiences with physical entities”.

Commencing his day with a preconceived idea, George will funnel his post-modern elements of natural and robotic and compile them into something unexpected. Recently, he’s collaborated with Dazed Beauty and Selfridges for makeup looks by Lucy Bridge. Other works have incorporated live visuals for LANY, with Tal Rosner and Jes Skrzypczak where George had adapted his process to a new medium, which was particularly important for the love of technical and creative factors going on. Elsewhere, George created a film titled Feel my Metaverse with friends Keiken Collective for Jerwood Space, an “intertwining” piece with “many different creative inputs” which we were lucky enough to dive into for Jerwood Art’s group exhibition. But as a whole, he likes to work across the board with different an amalgamation of different software used in unison. This can be a combination of animation techniques, 3D modelling, texturing software, as well as using Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Substance Paitner and Octane Render as his tools of choice – Unreal Engine, Houdini, After Effects and Photoshop he uses occasionally.

You may have come across George’s designs beforehand, as he worked on the design for FKA Twigs for her digital zine Avant Garden. A favourite project of his, George adds: “I had to reimagine the Avant Garden logo in 3D. I wanted the physicality of the object to suggest a story of how it was made.” To make the logo look “malleable” while also soft, he tells us how he used different 3D sculpting tools to flatten the lettering. “The compacted areas made unexpected small details around the edges of the 3D mesh. I was interested in the duality of the shape like it had been made by a blacksmith but with ornate and delicate features when viewed closer.” With detailed features and extra care paid to the texture of the metal, the logo gives off an oily texture and can be used in various different settings.

As for the future, George plans to continue prepping for a music video with Milkizm and future proofing a CGI installation for a science museum in Bristol, that will be on display for eight years. But really, you never know quite where things will be in the next few years – especially within the digital realm. George notes a level of “fragility” in this sphere, particularly when it comes to the things that exist digitally like our online experiences. Adamant that 3D works and our artificial lives online will one day become “obsolete and disappear” without the hardware to support it, who knows what he have laying ahead for us – but at least, for now, we have some fantastic works to look at.