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An Artist 3D-Scanned His Friend and Turned Him into a Bumbling Clone Army

What's more embarrassing than being turned into a crowd of sims?
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Watching a CGI clone army collapse into a glitchy human body pile-up makes free will seem sweeter than ever. This computer-generated slapstick, set to Bryan Adams' "Run to You," comes courtesy Jon Robson, a filmmaker and motion artist of 15 years. His new video, Crowd Sim 2, echoes the burgeoning medium of algorithmically-generated crowd simulations pioneered for movies like Lord of the Rings. Crowd Sim 1, however, is less chaotic and has much more Beastie Boys and breakdancing. It's chill.

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Lately, crowd simulations like these have become an art form in their own right through music videos and video art experiments. Robson's video is extra uncanny because he's using a detailed 3D scan of a friend, loaning the hapless humanoids a realistic face and skin. "My friend let me photoscan him. In return I made him immortal," Jobson writes in the video description. If art scholars are still talking about Crowd Sim 2 in 500 years, we hope they find it as funny as we do.

See more of Jon Robson's work on his website.

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