We agreed to make an animated music video for Heavy Dials in the summer this year, it was a great project to work on as the band already had a strong concept for the video, which we ran with. Set after a fire, the video sees a somewhat soul-less female character exploring a desolate burnt landscape, soon realising that she is gradually breathing life back into the earth. Trees and flowers grow around her, and towards the end she sees what she has created and decides to destory it so that she can begin the cycle once again; relating to the themes within the song.
The project came with many challenges as we were attempting things we had never tried before and it was a great learning curve. For one, we were making a female character with lots of skin showing and hair that moved in the breeze, these things were both troublesome so we are going to consider using different materials in future that are more adaptable to movement.
We also had to animate the set as well as the character, which was challenging from a design aspect as we had to build a set which could accomodate the trees underneath so that they could then be pushed up through the ground. It was also a challenge in terms of animating; adding tiny leaves one by one, shot by shot, whilst also moving the character was frustrating at times, but we really enjoyed this challenge and think that the end result is effective.
Once again our favourite part of the project was model making, it was great to be able to work on a detailed set again; creating charcoaled wood scrapings, ash and rubble and really working into the landscape. We also thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with a slighly more surreal 'other-worldy' aesthetic, encorporating un-natural materials such as wire into the naturalistic surroundings to give it a bit of an edge. This is something we would like to do more of in future.
The video is available to view in the work section of our website. Making photos and storyboard can be seen on our facebook page.
We are very greatful to Heavy Dials for giving us this opportunity, the single can be downloaded for free by following this link: heavydials.bandcamp.com