Ilyas Darakchiev, a Russian virtual footwear designer of ISDKV, will answer 7 questions and give us a look behind the scenes of his projects.
– Tell us a little bit about yourself! How did you become a 3D artist? - Hi! I started to draw 2D shoe concepts in early 2015, then, with time, my art evolved into 3D. I wanted to show more ideas that were difficult to draw on a completely flat surface. – What are your favorite aspects of the 3D world? Is there something you like the most? - The best thing is that you can export your 3D files and share them with people you want to collaborate with or put your art in games or apps. Your 3D fashion art can have a pretty interesting lifecycle, almost like a real product. You can show it at Virtual fashion week, exhibit in a virtual museum, sell at a virtual marketplace, but for real money and real attention from people and media. - What or who inspires you today? Any favorite hashtags or websites you check on a daily basis? - Two best sources of inspiration in IG for me: @conceptkicks and @simkomdotcom
Also I love to get on Pinterest and watch some images from different fields of interest: architecture, graphic design, chemistry, nature, etc. I collect Pins across different industries and take inspiration for my future designs. - Please tell us a few short tips for creating a Virtual Fashion brand / Do you have some suggestions for the absolute beginner in Virtual Fashion? - There are many Virtual Fashion designers appearing every day, so, first of all, you need to find your own style, otherwise, you may be lost among a huge number of other brands. - Could you please share with us your latest work with a short description. Where did the idea come from? What did inspire you? - Tetrapod Shoes. This sole was inspired by concrete tetrapod wave breakers. I found this object very interesting and unusual, it's made to be super stable. So, I came up with idea that I can make super stable shoes with these tetrapods on the outsole.
- Do you think there is a future for Virtual Fashion? - Definitely yes, Virtual fashion will survive and grow up in nearest future. But this phenomenon itself may be changed for new purposes. At least even now, we have two ways of development: using digital fashion skills for real production or making digital-only clothes. Which one would people choose? We will see it later. Maybe it would work out in both ways, and we could find even better solutions. - Being a digital artist: a matter of skills set or mindset? - For sure both of them are needed! You need skills in any digital software, but you also need to think as an artist. Otherwise, you will be just an IT guy or simply an artist.
You can find more works of Ilyas on the Instagram account and on Behance.
About us:
HONEY is a women-led digital fashion studio founded in 2021. We specialise in fashion design and animation for metaverses, digitalisation of physical collections, and fashion NFT creation.