Dániel Bali’s Impossible Physics Art

Part 8 in our Creator Spotlight Series

Though Dániel Bali lives and works in London, he’s originally from Hungary, and his extended family still lives there. It makes sense, then, that his art seems not only to transcend language, but to leave behind the possibility of description.

Dániel makes his GIFs using Blender, an open-source 3D image software. Art made with Blender is popular in certain Internet subcultures, but Bali’s work is remarkable for its minimal, abstract style.

Bali creates his painstaking animations in his spare time — he works as a software engineer, and says that he considers himself a “hobbyist-artist,” although he told me he’s worried that that sounds “a bit pretentious.” Before getting into digital art, he says he didn’t do much more than doodle. “I only really shared [my drawings] with family because I don’t think they’re very good. I was always interested in doodling. I always wanted to get into painting but I never really took the first step, I guess,” Bali says. Incredibly, he’s only been making his animations for nine months.

Dániel says that he decided to use Gfycat as soon as he knew he wanted to share his art with the world. “Gfycat was the best option, because it was so simple to upload everything. It supports 60 fps and has perfect loops handled so well. It was the perfect way to share with my friends, just send them the link and it works on every device and every platform.”

Bali was inspired to create his simulated art by the online communities he frequents, such as the subreddit r/simulated. “I like when I look at other people’s work. That inspires me,” he says. “I love how other artists use different materials and colors and motion in their physics simulations. You can produce something that could never exist in real life. You could make a fluid of particles that could never float, or it would be really difficult to get it done in real life. Really you can make anything you can imagine.”

An added perk of hosting his art on Gfycat: Bali can send his art to his family back in Hungary. “I can send Gfycat links to my grandma and she can open them and look at it. If I put it anywhere else, it’s not that easy.” I asked him what his grandmother thinks of his work. “She loves the ones I sent her, ” he says. “I only send her the G-rated stuff.”