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MODA
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
NICK DENBOER 

by Mila Phelps Friedl

From photo collage to small home construction, Nick DenBoer has charted many uncertain waters before diving into the space of digital kitbash-experimental collage animation in the pursuit of his now widely recognized style. Known online as Smearballs, self proclaimed “Professional smearballer,” DenBoer graduated from Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, where he is still based as an artist today. Says DenBoer, “I kind of gave up on the art world for a long time, because I did a lot of gallery shows when I was younger, and it was just a bit of a dead end… you know, you're trying to sell your work to your friends and family, whoever you can get out to an art show, and it's not, you know, as widely accessible as the digital art world where all of a sudden, the entire world can see your artwork and potentially buy it. [NFTs] really cracked open a market that was pretty closed off in the traditional art world sense.”


DenBoer’s kitbash-video collage style inspirations date back to library and bookshop visits where he’d salvage old magazines, creating “weird, distorted versions of ads and caricature collage.” It wasn’t until 2009 after 10 years in construction that DenBoer began to experiment with the video animation side of Youtube - “that kind of started a whole new career for me and now it's come full circle, rather into [the] NFT world and back into the fine art kind of side of things.”

These days, DenBoer’s abstract remix animations have found their way into collaborations, both creative and commercial, with DeadMau5, KFC, Conan O’Brien, Red Bull and Adult Swim - to name a few. DenBoer’s process depends on the kind of animation, if there is layering over video footage or if it is an original 3D character. Using programs like Cinema 4D, Octane, Houdini and ZBrush, DenBoer is able to create intricate scenes with hyperactive characters in varying degrees of bizarre positionings. Background music is added in Cubase while additional character work is completed in iClone or Character Creator 3 and Rokoko’s Motion Capture Suit software.


“I've amassed a giant collection of 3D assets and characters that I've made… clothing and themes and props that I can draw from, so it's somewhat of a kitbashing approach, taking existing assets and assets that I bought and assets that I made and mixing them all together. I still approach it as a bit of a remix artist, taking existing things and messing with them but it's getting more and more into just building more things from scratch and building up full detailed scenes…I just kind of try to have fun with it and make weird, surreal abominations.”


For DenBoer, 2022 is the year of personal projects - he is currently working on a sequel to “Another Day at the Office,” featured below, that will instead feature a house party scene with between 12 - 20 characters and quite a few details within the animation itself.


In his successes as a digital artist, DenBoer hopes that these early days of the NFT explosion even out to provide stability and appreciation for the talented digital artists who can make their art and a living in the digital fine art field. “[We’re] in the early days of this digital art NFT world, so it's kind of exploded in this weird bubble form and taking on kind of strange paths, but I think it's here to stay. I'm excited to keep grinding away… I think if artists just keep making great work and putting the time in, I think over time, it'll hold some value…I think a lot of the noise will get washed away as time progresses…. even in the early 2000s, digital artwork wasn't really accepted in the fine art world. Now. 20 years later, it's finally accepted. So we're still in the infancy, but I think it's gonna level out to be a more regular market at some point.”

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