Web Animation Watch: Music Video Edition
As always, if you've created (or even just found) something you think we should feature in an upcoming edition, drop us a line via email or via one of our social media channels.
The Kooks: So Good Looking
British Indie band The Kooks are back with a new single that comes with an animated video. The video is a homage to the classic Popeye cartoons, with the band's lead singer turned into a sailor who gains strength by eating baked beans (see what they did there?). It's not as smoothly animated as the classic 'toons (but then there's probably a considerable budget and time limit imposed) but it's a lot of fun. Animated by RMV Productions.
Delta Sleep :Afterimage
Filippo Morini, an animator based in Milan, Italy made this gorgeous hand-painted piece of animation for the track Afterimage by Delta Sleep. Dreamlike and beautiful, it shows just how well music and animation go together. It uses a largely monochromatic colour palette, with occasional colour to create something very special.Childish Gambino: Feels Like Summer
Childish Gambino, aka actor/comedian/writer/musician/unspeakably talented all-rounder Donald Glover made waves with this animated music video (which he co-directed) last year. An animated version of the musician takes a stroll around his neighbourhood- on paper, it doesn't sound that exciting. But if you missed it at the time, give it a looks to see why it won so much acclaim at the time.
Li'l Dicky: Earth
It starts in live-action, but this video is mostly animated- and rather brilliantly too. It features an all-star cast working for a positive cause (saving the Earth- not something you can really argue with) even if the music itself is a little bit.... of an acquired taste, shall we say? It's a shame the song features unnecessary swearing and drugs references (that aren't even funny) as otherwise, it would be a great way to educate youngsters about environmental issues.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Another chance to see popular shorts featured on previous editions of Web Animation Watch.
K/DA Pop Stars
What We Said: Another video game tie-in, another fantastic piece of work. This promotion for the popular League Of Legends is a music video featuring a K-Pop track featuring a virtual girl-band made out of characters from the game. None of that really matters though, as you don't need to know any of that to know this is quite simply an incredible piece of animation with some stunning visuals. The blend of 2D style and 3D character models here is some of the best we've seen yet.
TWRP: Starlight Brigade
As featured on a previous Watch This articleWhat We Said: This video looks like it could come from a lost sci-fi anime VHS from the 1980's- but it's actually a pitch-perfect homage from Knights Of The Light Table. It reminds us in particular of the classic videos from Daft Punk album Discovery, later released as the feature Interstella 555, directed by anime legend Leji Matsumoto (creator of Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock).
This particular flavour of Euro-Japan mash-up mines nostalgia for fans of Interstella as well as classic French/Japan co-productions like Ulysses 31 (what's with all the numbers?). The creators credit "Roger Dean, Hayao Miyazaki, and Moebius for all of their visual inspiration."
Knights Of The Light Table is a Texas based studio headed up Patrick Stannard, famed for his work on the hit Netflix Castlevania series. The video is produced by Stannard and directed by India Swift and art directed by Michael Doig. We're extremely excited to see more work from them in the future!
