These free-flowing, bubbly 3D illustrations by artist UV Zhu are delightful in their whimsy and color. He has a great way of showcasing stylish, fashion-forward characters with playful abstraction and softly colored 3D swoops and shapes. Often obscuring or replacing heads entirely with his trademark splashes, a surreal expression takes over, giving the art a feeling of joy.
Zhu is a Chinese 3D artist, and the work sits in a wave of soft, candy-colored character illustration that took over tech branding around 2020, when studios like Buck and freelancers on Behance and Dribbble made faceless, bendy figures in bright clothes the default look for apps and start-ups. What sets his apart is the way the heads dissolve into ribbons, as if the figure’s attention were a physical thing spilling out into the room. See more of the style in Mathieu L.B.’s fantastical 3D illustrations, Mynah FM’s animated emotions, and Raffaele Micillo’s tactile alphabet.
