Long has the idea of doing a project like this been on the mind and getting to execute on it with a band like karnivool has been a dream come true.

Part of the idea for the mix of live action and heavy animation was to simplify the process of shooting the band, for a 6 min+ music video with limited band access we knew we would be very limited on shooting schedule and budget. We knew we wanted to tell a very abstract and conceptual story too..

So approaching the animation became a necessity of simple, functional story telling and a resonably easy to execute process for a single 3D artist to create in less than a month, while I also juggle the demands of other ongoing jobs! And so our faceless mannequin characters were born.

Rendering power limited, we also used a plugin called AKVIS OilPaint Video to create the final overlayed painterly effect. This had both form and function, we love the way it blended 3D rendered frames into this unique and stylised image as well as allowing us to render each individual frame much faster as the plugin would cover the natural imperfections that come with faster renders. You might notice some of this in the breakdown!