Music / Get To Know
Get To Know: Jasper Golding
Creativity in the Bristol underground doesn’t limit itself to just DJs and producers. There’s another equally crucial part of the scene that defines and maintains the style of the moment, often times more so than the music itself – designers.
Since moving to Bristol in 2021, Jasper Golding has truly cemented himself as one of the most exciting, creative designers in the underground, making his mark across both the city and the UK. Through his 3D animation work, he weaves colourful worlds drenched in style, often feeling like a fever dream, and has truly captured the essence of the grimy yet comedic sound currently being pushed by those at the forefront of the scene.
I’ve worked alongside him a lot personally with my own label, creating 3D renders of Turbo Island and The Bear Pit (pictured below), and he recently landed one of his biggest jobs yet: Creating the official tour video for UK number one artist/UK Garage producer Interplanetary Criminal.
is needed now More than ever
We chatted inspiration, freelance work, the creative process, and how the skating is going.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CoXtX5woXv-/
Hello! How the devil are you?
I ate!
You’re an animator, illustrator, games designer – is there anything you can’t do?
Dude! Too kind – I definitely do like to look into lots of different things. I don’t really mind about the ‘master of none’ side of that, variety is the spice of life, so they say?
I do feel like I’m getting more illiterate since finishing university though haha, or is everyone just getting more illiterate?
From my perspective, your main focus is your animation work – when/how did you first get into that?
Damn that’s a good question! I’d actually say my first interaction with sequencing stuff was actually while messing with reason (the music production program) when I was about 15 when my dad gave me an old disc of it. it’s actually not that different to after effects or 3D software, it’s all just timelines and keyframes and parameters. Other than that I used to do stop frame animation while I was at university doing illustration! Those were early memories of making stuff move.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CR_cakQsGqy/
What does a day in the life of Jasper Golding look like?
I will most likely be sitting at my pc for most of the day, with occasional food, coffee, activity, skate breaks. Got a lovely skate spot round the corner so be practising my 370 late shuv manoeuvres over there.
How would you describe your art style and creative process?
For my personal work/commissions I’d say I’m just channelling that early Playstation/old pc game style with a sprinkling of more contemporary animation techniques. I love the warmth of old software and the human edge, the limitations that came with making those early games drive this stuff quite a lot too. E.g – low poly meshes, low res textures, snappy animation.
DJ LIVELEAK: YUMMY – photo: Jasper Golding
Process wise I’d say the act of grabbing and working the textures is quite a big part of where the environment comes together. I tend to compile these textures from about the net as well as going and taking photos, recently started using AI for this too, you can type things like “flat repeating texture of a brick wall…old pc games graphic etc etc etc” and it usually comes out pretty usable and interesting – that’s been good for more abstract stuff.
Once the environments are done I tend to just charge about with the camera and get shots – that’s super fun but it’s easy to end up with way too much footage. The edit is a whole other job that usually I just leave to one or two sessions of wild smooshing together of clips.
Screencap showing camera angles in a current project – photo: Jasper Golding
You do a lot of work with Off World Live, a company specialising in live-streaming VFX and animations (at least that’s what they do to the best of my understanding) – talk a bit more about the sort of work you’re doing with them.
Yes! They’ve been amazing to work with, truly learnt some awesome lessons while working there, I spend quite a lot of time finding interesting people who use the Off World Live tools and chatting to them, either just geeking out about stuff, talking collabs, or figuring out solutions. I get to chat to so many mad people through this, so I feel super blessed about that. We get all sorts from stop frame animation studios to VFX artists for games like resident evil, to people making large scale geodesic domes for live visuals… the toolkit users are such a crazy broad range and the world of real time VFX is a supportive community that is just so passionate about discovery and innovation while making captivating visual work. The community there is awesome.
My current avatar, “Effy”:
I also make tutorials on using the tools and am starting a shared GitHub repo full of assets for use in Unreal Engine, the idea being that you could download the project and use the tools within it to make awesome work more quickly. From technical tools for things like nDisplay and composure, to more aesthetic and fun tools like a virtual flying drone controlled by an Xbox controller, or a fancy lighting setup.
It’s been an awesome challenge stepping into the game design side of things while working on this project and it’s taught me some great working practices for game design and project management.
On the weekends, what’s the move?
Been enjoying getting stuck in Bristol’s nightlife mostly! Day life too in the summer – been blessed with an excellent crew of weekend warlords to keep me in the loop on what’s good in Bristol, it’s mostly been these weird Belters nights though? The guy gets about!
You moved to Bristol just over a year ago – how did you initially find your way into the scene here?
I’d say it’s all down to my uni homies and further connections from there! (Large shout out to Longeez for the immediate warm welcome to Bris) Other than that pretty much all of that networking stuff tends to just start on instagram, doing a bit of URL to IRL, then other than that meeting people at parties has been a massive driving force for making awesome new creative connections, who’d have thought you can be drunk and productive!?
What’s one of your favourite pieces you’ve made?
Tricky one! All my pieces have unique moments attached so I love that they form a kind of log of memories of where I was at when making them. But I have a soft spot for a lot of the characters I’ve made over time, like the skeleton or the frog, they all have names on my pc and are sitting in a folder together, hopefully one day all existing in one 3D world.
Examples of some characters Jasper has made – photo: Jasper Golding
Strangest thing you’ve ever brought to life in your work?
Hahah love this – oh my god just take a look at any of my millions of old project files and they’re just an awkwardly lit hellscape of failed creations layered and squished on top of each other. I think the whole feel of these in progress project files is so unnerving… Being a 3D modeller, you have to endure a lot of strangeness before anything starts looking pretty. It becomes all too normal to be among morphed detached body parts of strange colours or the inside of a head.
If I had to pick a piece, maybe the weird 360 video I made for Oli Johns’ song, ‘sounding sweet’ that was ridiculous, we have been on and off making some super fun stuff, hopefully get some of it finished when we get the time.
Oli’s been making these awesome vocaloid covers of popular songs, they have an amazing feel to them, so it’s been super fun to work on visual themes for that project.
What would be your dream project?
I don’t know! Don’t think I’d know it before it’s in front of my eyes, as long as it’s keeping me afloat and I get to learn some new skills while I’m at it then I’m living the dream.
Being a purely freelance creative, how do you deal with creative blocks?
Yeah I’d say there’s timing to keep in mind! If I feel like the thing I’m working on is just not flowing, then I’ll just try and do something else. I’d say there’s times when you will have the most inspiring time ever just watching YouTube videos, then there’s other times when you’ll be producing work a mile a minute. I’d say the trick to it is to know when you’re in the zone for what, hard to predict and sometimes you’re just too limited by deadlines, but if you can foster that kind of workflow then you’re golden.
You were recently commissioned to make the tour animation for the new Interplanetary Criminal tour – how was that experience?
Rishi was a great project manager for that, we were just making a cool video for the love of it and Rishi really drove that feeling throughout. It had a few crunch time moments as we got closer to the deadline, as it always goes! But honestly to be able to play with the theme and tackle the task of making a more realistic-ish looking piece, that was just mad fun!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CmCJvgrNYed/
What are your hopes for 2023 – both creatively and personally?
To learn more about game dev and real time VFX mostly! Make some pretty things and most of all try to do this while making time to chill and just be with friends and loved ones. Just can’t wait for summer and rolling out in a T-shirt with not much to do! Love those days. I’m a total contradiction between feverishly working in the digital world, ever growing and learning and trying to make mental shiz – and then wanting to mellow out in the sun and enjoy a more analogue way of life, playing records and maybe drawing. Got some kind of ying yang going on!
Leave us with a track you’ve been rinsing lately.
This, 10 hr version
Main photo: Effy by Jasper Golding
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