Storm is a 2D animated space race for survival!
Only one racer can win, and only one can live.
Watch the Music Video below, and you can also snag the Storyboard & Design PDF for only a couple bucks!
Brittany Penn and I worked on this animation between Feb and Sep of 2020 during lockdown.
We were also working on other projects and posting new loops every month on Patreon.
Storm was a challenging video to finish, but I’m always grateful to be able to work on creative projects.
Animatic
Below is the Animatic – a storyboard “blueprint” for the music video.
Animation Journal -Excerpt
This production journal shows some of the behind-the-scenes thought process. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the rambling thoughts, discarded drawings, and conversations that don’t get seen when making a full animation.
We exchanged over 100 emails with Alampa’s team. Since they’re from Russia, there was some communication difficulties, and very specific ideas in the script. As a result, the storyboards needed to be more detailed to communicate the ideas.
The storyboards alone took about 2 months of around-the-clock work:
PRODUCTION JOURNAL – Brittany jumpstarted this project with the initial concept sketches for characters and storyboard thumbnails of the space arena and racers.
We’re basing the Alien racers off the 5 Human senses, and the blind Human Racer symbolizes the 6th sense.
Alampa wanted us to turn their actor from another music video into an animated human:
Each Vehicle will have a symbol that represents each sense. The Vehicles will change from HoverCars, to Submarines, to Rockets as the environments change!
When walking in the woods I’ll sometimes figure out a problem, like how many layers of parallax scrolling should be used in a shot to convey a certain sense of motion and depth.
A pocket notepad comes in handy during these walks. There’s something special about listening to music, walking in the woods, and seeing random visual patterns in nature that inspires a flexible ways of thinking.
Walking is great way to stimulate both the body and the mind.
There’s so many cuts in this 4 minute animation. Because the script is about a space race taking place in 5 main locations, there’s a need for multiple shots showing the scenery changing, as well as huge panning backgrounds.
Some of the backgrounds are 9X the size of the screen. Brittany is making huge space back drops in Photoshop. Keeping track of all these files is kinda tricky, and my 2011 iMac is running out of free space again…
In the past we’ve used about 50-70 storyboards for a 4 min. video, but this one has more than double that amount, totaling at 180 storyboards.
Because each shot lasts for a short time, there’s a lot of work being compressed into a 100+ cuts. The pacing is fast, which works for a race.
There’s a lot of design work going into this music video – much more than normal. In the past I played a lot more jazz with the animation, animating more loosely and spontaneously. Draw some rough concept art, and let it evolve and morph into trippy stuff during the animation phase.
But in this video, unique vehicle designs have to be made for all 6 racers, and more vehicle designs for each environment, since the vehicles morph into new forms with each location (e.g. HoverCars in the desert transform into Submarines in the Ocean).
So now I’m spending hours studying mech designs, submarines, spaceships and the like.
The biggest obstacle isn’t so much envisioning the animation, but figuring out what’s possible to animate under a tight deadline and limited budget. It’s one thing to think of some motion and scenery, but the real work is translating floaty abstract thoughts into a sequence of frames that people can understand.
One thing that’s hard is color. Maybe because it has endless possibilities in animation.
Color can seem clear in your head, but when you actually open up your drawing program and select the color wheel, the difference between the vaguely defined colors in your mind has to confront the harsh clarity of real colors starring back at you from the screen.
It can be difficult to find colors that match the depth and scope of what’s imagined.
Why do fun imaginary things in your mind often fall apart when made real?
The visual clarity that comes from finished colors and shapes is only possible by sitting down and doing the work one step at a time.
It’s a building process.
It’s about gathering a mess of feelings and thoughts and translating it into something another person could understand.
Thinking is the first step, but thoughts disappear and morph into other thoughts fast.
Being able to sketch out quick thumbnails is vital.
Then you rough it in.
Defining the thumbnails into key storytelling images.
Thinking of the staging, motion of characters/objects, and how the shot will look in the context of what comes before and what comes after. Also considering how many seconds the shot will last. Is it really a good idea to spend 10+ hours on a tiny detail in the background that will only be on screen for 2 seconds?
If time is a luxury, maybe. But the most important thing is to focus on the most important thing – extra details can come later (and very often MORE detail doesn’t mean BETTER. There’s a fine line).
It normally takes the eye about 3 seconds to comfortably read an image. But if you’re trying to create a frenzied feeling of excitement, cutting a sequence of shots down to rapidly appear for 1 second or less can be powerful. Of course, varying the shot length is normally desired. Going fast, then slow… whatever rhythm the sequence demands. Fast, slow, and everything in between. It adds texture. Just like how a song doesn’t stay the exact same intensity through out (in most genres).
If every single cut is exactly 2.5 seconds long, the shots will have a mechanical nature (and that might be what you’re going for, but probably not).
Welp, back to work.
Credits
Script & Concept – Artemy Ortus, Nikolay Krok
Animation – Brittany Penn & Micah Buzan
Storyboard & Art Director – Micah Buzan
General producer – Nikolay Krok
Executive Producers – Egor Solomatin, Alexei Likhnitskiy
Product Manager – Aleksandr Tsyrin
Sound engineer – Ed Davydov
Mastering – Chris Gehringer (Sterling Sound)
Music: – Tagir Kurbangadzhiev, Nikolay Krok
Lyrics & Vocal – Katerina Kolgan
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