Music video direction and animation for the band BOO.
The band wanted an ambient, looping video of the singer walking through the Sonoran desert from sunrise to sunset.
Process
I filmed the singer on a treadmill against a greenscreen background and created the desert using a mixture of 2D painted and 3D modelled elements in Blender.
I brought these elements together in After Effects with a hand painted, animated sky background and frame-by-frame animated lines from Adobe Animate. The painting style was inspired by the Western paintings of Brett Allen Johnson and Robert Watts.
I used a painterly plug-in with various customized presets to create the overall painted look. I rendered several passes with different levels of detail then used motion tracking and mattes to apply these to specific areas, like the face, so the audience could still clearly see the mouth articulating the words of the song.
Watch the video below for more detail on the process of creating this video.
The song is about being lost in the unknown, searching for a kind of absolution while stuck in limbo. At first glance a desert can seem empty and barren, but look long enough and you discover it’s full of life.
