Shudu Gram has modelled for some of the biggest brands in the world, like Rihanna’s Fenty beauty, often counted as one of the most diverse makeup ranges of all time.
She boasts an online following of nearly 40,000 people, with each photo she posts racking up thousands of likes and attracting comments like “you are too pretty to be real”.
And here’s the catch: she’s not.
And we don’t mean that in a ‘Instagram is a highly filtered medium and hardly depicts real life’ kind of way. We don’t even mean it in a ‘what the fashion world deems beautiful is not a true representation of beauty’ way.
We mean it literally. As in, Shudu is not a real person. She is in, fact, 100 per cent computer generated.
Shudu is the creation of 28-year-old self taught British photographer Cameron-James Wilson, who created the CGI model as a way to be more in touch with the work he was producing.
“I didn’t know at the time but in creating her it really helped me to deal with things that I was going through at the time,” Cameron told writer Isiuwa Igodan.
LISTEN: Clare Stephens speaks candidly about how a week on the red carpet changed the way she feels about her body. Post continues after audio.
“Feeling out of touch with my own work, underappreciated and that I had talent but I didn’t know what to do with it.