This is the second video project that I've been a part of for the Swiss alternative rock band The Great Alone (the first one can be found here).
Before diving into the animation details, have a look at the complete video, directed by Brice Hincker (the animation sequence starts at 2:48):
As with the previous song, the band already had the concept fleshed out - an open-to-interpretation sequence of a human figure hunted by a shadow and undergoing a transformation. I wanted a flat look with strong silhouettes that would be easy to "read" even with the fast and urgent motion. After a lot of experimenting, I found the right good balance. It's rock music after all, so some gritty texture overlays were added towards the end.
A lot of the forest elements (golden leaves, various little denizens with sinister eyes) are only visible for a few frames, providing eye candy and ester eggs for those that view the video carefully several times.
Technically speaking, the bulk of the assets were painted in Photoshop, then assembled in After Effects and animated with a pretty basic 2.5D parallax setup. The most time consuming part of the work was to manually draw over the frames in order to get a more organic cel animation look. Here, Timelord was a very helpful tool.
As with the "Cell" video, I think that the mix of filmed footage with hand-made animation is a winning recipe for music videos. I also made some social media and Spotify Canvas edits for the video, something that's increasingly requested bands/record labels.
