Meet the Artist Who’s Animating Justin Bieber’s Next Chapter

Justin Bieber has been hard at work on his new clothing line Skylrk, sharing glimpses of future products with his nearly 300 million followers in a series of recent Instagram posts. One reveal in particular has had fans buzzing. On April 3, the pop star debuted a video directed by 3D artist Gal Yosef that shows an animated Bieber riding an electric scooter to a house that he then promptly burns.

He walks in to find relics of his past life, including the smiley face logo of the Drew House clothing line he started in 2019 with former friend Ryan Good (Drew is Bieber’s middle name); outside, waiting while the residence goes up in flames, is his wife, Hailey Bieber, with a stroller (son Jack Blues was born in August 2024). The two kiss and walk toward the setting sun holding hands, never turning back. That Bieber chose a scooter running out of power as a metaphorical visual element — one of several easter eggs spotted in the 70-second video — was presumably no coincidence. (Read more about that here.)

Digital sculptor Yosef first interacted with Bieber via DM. “That was when my life changed completely,” he says of their early Instagram exchanges, which would lead to multiple collaborations. The 30-year-old Israeli is renowned for his 3D interpretations of iconic cartoon characters, creating hyper-realistic one-of-a-kind animations and paintings of such subjects as Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants and Hello Kitty, often presented with a darker undertone that hints at the lust for luxury.

Bieber became enamored of Yosef’s work, and he wasn’t alone: Rapper A Boogie Wit da Hoodie enlisted Yosef to create album art and other animated visuals for his A Boogie vs Artist release, which led him to the attention of Steve Aoki. The NFT craze was good to Yosef, who works on a combination of software (including Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, Zbrush and Adobe’s Substance 3D Painter) and organic materials. Today, Yosef exhibits at the Eden Gallery, which has displayed his work in its flagship New York, London and Dubai galleries, among a dozen more locations.

Yosef, who grew up in Jerusalem and now resides in Miami, began drawing at the age of 12. “I was really obsessed with iconic cartoon characters and I always wanted to bring them to life,” he says.

Of the Skylrk video, which took three months to create, Yosef says Bieber was “expressing himself honestly,” adding that it’s meant to evoke “a new beginning with Hailey and Jack and into the new journey of Skylrk.”

Watch the visual below:

A version of this story appeared in the April 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.