There are some projects that are so exciting you can’t so no to them, and this was one that I just had to take on despite my full time job. I’ve always wanted to illustrate for a music video, and I’d never done any actual visual development work for animation before. So when an old friend approached me about collaborating on a music video animation project I couldn’t say no. The process was very intense, but also very rewarding. I lost about three months of my free time, but here is a look into some of the visual development and illustration process.
The beginning of the project was a very exciting time. The singer/songwriter had a very specific story she wanted depicted alongside her song, and a general idea of the look and feel. She wanted the artwork to pay homage to classic Disney and Pixar animation while telling the story of a romantic tragedy. After reading through the song lyrics a few times I started by pulling reference and creating some loose concept drawings to get a fell for the mood of the animation both in terms of character design and scenery.
Then I got into the process of character design. This was fun because the main character was based on the singer/songwriter herself, Kemi. There were 4 characters in total that needed to be designed, the main, the love interest (who she wanted to be a redheaded dreamboat) and two police officers (who she wanted to showcase diversity). The main and love interest characters had a few wardrobe options that I wanted to include for variety, making this design process all the more fun to work on.
After the character designs were all approved, and the turnarounds were prepped, I moved onto designing the backgrounds and scenes. Within the couple’s apartment there were four different “shots” that I established in additional to several different shots at the police station and a nighttime park.
After all the designs were finished and approved, it came time to prep everything for animation which is arguably the most tedious part of the entire process. It was so cool to hand off the assets to the animator and see everything come to life! This is really just a little glimpse into the development work that went into prepping the illustrations for the final music video.
The Man Who Stole The Moon is out on Spotify and wherever else you get your music, and you can watch the official music video here on Youtube!