Guster - Doin’ It By Myself
I made a music video recently for the band Guster which was released Thursday 10th December and I thought I would write a more detailed blog post about the project.
You can watch the video below:
How I got the commission
Like most of my music video commissions, this one came through Radar Music Videos. I never knew about the band Guster before I pitched on this music video and I am very happy I found them! Great music and even better clients!
When I heard the beginning of the track it immediately made me feel happy. I wanted to create something that shared similar colour palettes and vibe to the Beatles movie ‘Yellow Submarine’. The band agreed with me to make it as weird and surreal as possible so I hope I’ve achieved that!
The budget was tight and the time to produce it was only 5 weeks. I knew it was going to be hard, working very long hours for the entire duration. I was determined to get his video made. I haven’t been given the opportunity to make something like this for a client and I really wanted to step up my work since winning the Grand Prix prize at the Adcan Awards.
The pitch
I wanted to create a mesmerising 2D animated video following one man’s mission to make the world a better place. The animation was to be fluid and abstract with a slight sixties feel.
Guster style frames
The animation process
The animation itself was all done in Toonboom Harmony as were the style frames before being exported to After Effects where I added some textured overlays.
The main character has long hair as well as a beard which I’ve never animated before. I didn’t anticipate how long animating each strand of hair would take.
The man was animated first while the world was animated around him afterwards on separate layers. I am very much a character animator so doing detailed backgrounds wasn’t something I wanted to pursue. The backdrop elements are abstract on purpose to save time.
I liked the idea of the video changing from day and night between choruses and verses.
Conveniently, most of the animated work was done in the night colour palette, which has less colours to use during the cleanup process.
The beginning section of the music video was the most vivid in my head and it was also the part that took the longest. Walk cycles that move in perspective are tricky and I had to time it perfectly to the track. I did the rough animation on with a frame exposure of 2 before cleaning them up on 1. This was to save time in the long run, but still achieve the fluid look I wanted.
I made use of animation cycles with the man walking and the buildings travelling past him.
One walk cycle was duplicated and used later on also to save time. For the shot below, there were three building layers drawn out, 2 of which were duplicated and added to a peg with some rotation keyframes.
The lyrics “We’re no longer babies”, made me think of the characters Wynken, Blynken, and Nod from a poem, sailing in their shoe so I decided to include them.
i didn’t want to create traditional bird flying cycles, I’ve done them before. I made them more abstract in form and made it look like they are swimming through the sea like it’s an ocean.
The pace changes just before the chorus and I wanted the animation to reflect this transition with some motion graphics. This was one of the last sequences I animated. It’s simple, but effective.
I deliberately played with perspective a lot and broke rules just to get more interesting compositions and movements.
There was only masking animation done in After Effects for a few shots at the end.
Final thoughts
Nettwerk Music Group were brilliant clients. As soon as the idea was approved, I was allowed to just get on with making the video while sending them major weekly updates instead of tedious daily ones. I’m really pleased with how the final video turned out and I think it’s the strongest commissioned work I’ve ever created. I wouldn’t attempt to do so much in the same time period though, it was tough.
If you have any questions regarding my process, ask via tumblr or if it’s easier drop me an email sundeeptoor(at)rocketmail.com
