Born in Russia, Snezhana Paderina is an art director in fashion and technology. Based out of New York, she works with CG cinematics and 3D designing as a fashion film director. With a drive to learn design from an American university, given that English was not her first language, Paderina combined it with her technical know-how to help her get through.

“Imagine coming from a tech background and going to an art school and then the fashion industry in the US,” said Paderina, sitting in her office in Turkey, a Meta Quest headset sitting on the shelf behind her, in an exclusive interaction with AIM.

“I had to write these long essays on art. So, I created a neural network to do it,” she said about her experience at design school. Being a big fan of Cyberpunk, she used William Gibson‘s books on Blade Runner and Neuromancer to build a bot that could write essays for her. “That’s how I first used AI.”

Paderina said that she always wanted to be a programmer. “When I was eight years old, I watched The Matrix for the first time, and that is how I got into computers. I never wanted to go into fashion.”

Currently, Paderina works at DeV Virtual Production as an art and cinematics director, where she uses Unreal Engine for AR, VR, and 3D filmmaking, along with fashion and game development. Her website Snezhana.nyc also highlights her love for using tech in fashion and film.

Paderina completed her education in cyber security but was always inclined towards using it in some creative ways. One fine day she got a sewing machine and suddenly realised how her experience with programming and coding could actually augment the fashion industry. Then she got into fashion. 

“It doesn’t matter if it’s fashion or film, it is like a canvas for me,” said Paderina. In 2013, Paderina did her first fashion show, where she presented her CGI and 3D printing collection. “I realised that I needed some education in fashion,” she laughed. She then joined Parson School of Design in New York. 

“Using the Unreal Engine in filmmaking allowed me to combine everything that I have learnt as there are no constraints like in real-life film making.” Being an avid gamer with games such as Cyberpunk, she also aims to go into developing games in the future.

‘I think like a tech person, more than anything else‘

In 2018, when NVIDIA was announcing the launch of its RTX series GPUs, the Russian branch of the company contacted Paderina for a collaboration for the fashion industry at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, where she made her ‘RAY’ collection. “From a designer’s point of view, it was very challenging because I had to create a collection that would be appealing to both audiences, which are very different gamers, and fashion insiders,” she explained.

Today, Paderina uses Midjourney to create storyboards for her movies. “It’s the fastest way to convey my vision to the team,” she added. She also uses ChatGPT to analyse scripts. “I put my scripts in ChatGPT, and ask it to analyse it from a viewer standpoint to find weak spots, and actually it gives very good results by suggesting weak spots in the character arc and many more things.”

“I feel that people should learn how to utilise AI,” Paderina talks about the fear of AI. “I see a lot of artists who feel threatened by AI because Midjourney can draw better than us,” she laughed. “I spent 15 years drawing and now I do it in seconds. But these people feel that AI is a threat, they are kind of closing themselves to it, instead of adopting it in their work, just as they did with sewing machines to remove the tedious work.”

In a wearable tech competition in Spain, Paderina with her collaborator, Nikita Replyanski, got first place for building GS[3], which is a corset with a graduated spine support system provides dynamic back support for patients suffering from medical conditions which cause joint hypermobility and chronic musculoskeletal issues that require daily spinal support. 

“We made this corset very fashionable on purpose because we wanted to normalise medical devices as part of your outfit, instead of hiding under clothes,” Paderina explained.

Embracing technology is all we need

“With the team in 3D, we also use AI for motion capture and taking visual reference,” Paderina continued. “You put the models through AI and you get the motion capture data for 3D characters animation.” The team also uses AI on Unreal Engine for generating textures and meshes, which Paderina highlights is pretty groundbreaking.

Furthermore, she highlighted that with the development of deepfake, it is very interesting to see the future of entire films being made just using AI with actors, scripts, sound, and even speech. “I think that is what people in Hollywood are afraid of and are giving a pushback to AI in the field.”

When it comes to fashion, “AR has a huge potential because the fashion industry is dependent on consumers,” she added. “It would be so cool for fashion if you could see other people’s clothes changing. For example, you wear a t-shirt with the marker that you want, and other people see changes on your clothes when they see them through glasses.”

“I expect a lot from Apple Vision Pro and other such upcoming wearables,” Paderina spoke about the future of AR/VR in films and fashion. “There is something really good about interaction and interactivity that these gadgets can provide, as we saw with games.”