The Flaming Lips – Animated Music Video.
The winning entry for the Genero.tv Video Contest for “Look… The Sun Is Rising” by Micah Buzan. The song is from experimental rock band The Flaming Lips’ thirteenth studio album The Terror.
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CONCEPT
Wayne Coyne had apocalyptic visions for Look … The Sun Is Rising:
“I know this is normally an optimistic statement: “look…the sun is rising!!”…but here, it signals the enemy…like the way a vampire dreads the dawn.
There is a time at 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning when, after you’ve been up all night, there is sense that you have escaped from your life…from your routines…from your responsibilities…but you don’t know it; you are just floating unaware of the fake freedom you are experiencing…and then you look over your shoulder and you catch a glimpse of the horrible solar rule – the rule that says, “a new day will come”…the rule that says, “time marches on”.
We are, if we are lucky, obedient slaves to the wonderful sun… but, yeah…we are slaves…we owe everything to it…and we know we cannot escape it.
When the sun comes up, it means the world is awake again and that I must be awake again…awake again to the truths that the sun has taught us: that nothing lasts forever… that everything dies. But love can burn more brightly and more intensely despite knowing this.
It’s a motherfucker…we love life even more when we know it is going from us…”
Art Soothes Our Suffering
Taking over 2,000 drawings to complete, this hand-drawn animation details the eccentric ecosystem of some planet.
Animals on this planet live trapped in orbs, which are connected to machines that use animal energy as a means of producing clouds of various colors for the sun.
One animal controls a flying-machine that is powered by an organ. When played, this organ produces rainbow clouds. He flies through the sky without any worries – playing his organ with the belief that he is truly free – until he finally confronts the planet’s sun.
BEHIND THE SCENES
In this video, I explain the time-consuming and complex process for creating the psychedelic animation for The Flaming Lips.
Dreams inspired the narrative and aesthetic.
Most of us have woken up from a crazy dream and tried to tell someone about it, yet the moment you use words to try to explain this bizarre, crazy dream, it suddenly doesn’t sound that interesting anymore.
Animation allows the mind to bypass words and project dreams straight onto a surface for other people to see, without being obscured by language.
It’s much more interesting to tell your dreams with pictures because then it’s more open for interpretation. People can fuse the imagery with their own dreams, and decide what it means.
If you enjoyed this, check out the weird music videos I did for Moon Duo!
And if you’re a creative professional, please visit my Shop for Animations you can use in your projects.
Animation Frames
I combined makers, pencils, and pens for the animation. Many of the backgrounds were painted with watercolors.
I taught myself animation by making flipbooks – drawing one frame after another and scanning them into the computer.
Now, I draw primarily in TVPaint. I’ll sometimes combine both traditional and digital media. However, when working digitally, I try to emulate the hand-drawn aesthetic.
There’s definitely pros and cons to both approaches. Drawing on a Wacom Tablet or Cintiq takes getting used to – it’s almost like your brain has to relearn how to draw on a different surface. You don’t have the full control of drawing on paper, or the texture of paper. However, drawing digitally becomes second nature after a few weeks.
One of the biggest benefits of animating digitally is it eliminates the need to scan or photograph countless drawings.
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Thanks for watching / reading!
Micah Buzan
