Cactus Magazine

Thomas Brown and Envol had been discussing collaborating on a mixed reality project when Thomas got a call from Cactus Digital, about a feature to mark the magazine’s 10th anniversary.

We dove straight in to craft a multidisciplinary beauty story. Fusing real life photography, with CGI and AI, the idea was to imagine a mythical, unexplored underwater world. A world where monsters of the deep spawn fuse and entangle with legendary products, designed to empower and protect those brave enough to venture deep.

From AI to photography and CGI, our ambition from the outset was to use mixed realities, push creative boundaries and discover new ways of working.

The back plates of each image were generated using AI. These were manipulated, physically printed and projected onto a real life studio setup before we shot the products. 

Using diagrams of in studio lighting, we rebuilt virtual studios in 3D and crafted flowing liquids, mercury and abstract tentacles, Matching these with real life wax, water and glass which were all shot on set, each piece came together to form abstract underwater worlds.