Sound and vision: the 3D animation of Reggie Perry, Jr

When Reggie Perry, Jr. looked at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2001, the fees were too high for him to attend Georgia's famous art school. Today, however, the artist is pushing the boundaries in 3D animation and music in ways he never could have imagined back then. Even his showreel is original – using a variety of creative skills, he presents his portfolio like a voice-activated virtual reality journey through his finest projects.

"The description on my social media profiles is 'Exploring Black Culture and parenting my inner child through 3D, animation and music.' I think that encapsulates the approach I am trying to take with my work and drives the topics and characters I explore. Twenty years ago, a lot of this just seemed out of reach. Not only did I not personally know any 3D designers, animators or graphic designers, I certainly didn't know of any who looked like me," says Reggie.

Music has played a big role in Reggie's creative journey and continues to do so. He graduated in business, but in 2012, he produced the track Rosana for the rapper Wax under the moniker Nobody Famous. The record became a hit in Europe, and he still works under that name, remixing tracks by leading Hip-Hop artists and adding his own 3D animated visuals.

"By switching between audio production and visual art, it has helped me to improve in both areas. Some of my favourite projects are the Missy Elliott and Lupe Fiasco visualisers I made," says Reggie. "I remember being blown away as a young teen when first seeing Missy Elliott's videos. To this day, they are some of the most creative music videos ever created. Recreating one of the scenes and then animating the character was a ton of fun. The big, blown-up, shiny suit with the wide-angle lens is such an iconic scene."

Giving the visuals a twist of his own, he has experimented, for example, with a unique papier-mâché effect that is so much more eye-catching than the smoothly rendered finish typical of 3D animation. While Reggie's original inspiration came from films like Toy Story, he's a big fan of what movies like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem bring to the field – gritty, realistic, surreal, playful, abstract –visual mashups nobody would dream of attempting in camera.

Working mainly in Blender, Reggie replicates the non-photorealistic look of 1990s cel animation but does so photo-realisticallyy in 3D to create unusual and ever-changing effects in his work. Brush strokes, halftone patterns, fabric,s and thumbprints are part of the expression. Substance Painter, Nomad Sculp,t and Marvelous Designer are other tools in his arsenal, with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects used to grade and assemble his animations.

Reggie's constant visual and audio remixing leads to the kind of client projects he loves – ones that lock into his scene and benefit his community. "One of my favourites from this year was for an organisation based out of Washington, DC called Ujima, the National Center on Violence Against Black Women. I had the opportunity to create an animation for a billboard that ran in Times Square for a week," he says.

Another favourite is the animation work he did for the artist Adrien, an old music industry contact in New York. Alongside imagery for the tracks Sometimes and City 2 Save – which cover themes such as bullying, suicide prevention and gun violence – he designed hoodies to support the project.

Next up, Reggie is busy with a new series called Token. "It's based on my adolescence experience growing up in the rural South, attending a predominantly white school and touching on everything that came along with that. This is definitely my most ambitious project, but it is something that I am very passionate about. Much of the work I've been doing this year experimenting with different visual styles and techniques has been to develop a look for this series. I've had the concept for the series for a solid decade; now I feel it is the time to bring it to life," he says.