Miku Expo Rewind+: Digital Stars
Digital Stars is a sub-event of Miku Expo, an international concert tour which annually celebrates the collaborative works of creatives worldwide with Crypton Media's virtual singer, Hatsune Miku. By invitation of my talented friend and Vocaloid producer beat_shobon, I was given the opportunity to create visuals for his DJ set which premiered live on Miku Expo's twitch channel during their 2022 show.
I worked alongside a tight-knit group of animators, illustrators and motion designers over the course of about one month, and the result was roughly 30 minutes of original visuals, divided into portions dedicated to particular songs, artists, or pre-existing music videos. While some were more collaborative efforts, below are the sections which I took responsibility for on my own.
My portion of visuals for beat_shobon's set for Miku Expo Rewind+.
Triple Baka
Much of my inspiration and visual ideas for this section came from the song’s original 2008 music video, along with it’s re-animated version below. Upbeat and cheerful, Triple Baka revolves around three Vocaloid characters, as they sing and banter about the conflicting behaviour of creatives- being sometimes excited and ambitious, while at other times easily distracted or demotivated.
The original, re-animated music video for Triple Baka.
As the music transitioned seamlessly from the previous section to this one using the beeping of the cell phone, I aimed to emphasize this buildup visually, showing just enough of the phone to give an idea without giving it all away immediately. Later, I was informed that this particular song had been asked for many times during Digital Stars events in the past, which made this portion particularly exciting for fans.
Heavily influenced by the simple, light, and abstract backgrounds of the original video, I had mine take place in a similar setting- translated to a clean, white 3D space. This setting also served to better showcase the trio of accent colors, derived from the starring characters. In combination, I intended these visual elements to be reminiscent of the original animation, while providing opportunity for new ideas.
One challenge I encountered was character representation. The song and its iconic visuals center around three characters, but due to rights restrictions, I was only able to show the likeness of one. My workaround was to instead use objects from the original video to represent each character, and make these my subjects instead. This representation was reinforced using relationship to accent colors, their interactions with one another, and other references to their “personalities” established by the Vocaloid community.
Letter to the Black World
Making clever use of censorship and wordplay, the next song in the set is sung by a rebellious narrator, who’s colorful and suggestive language is blocked in their attempt to describe the vague forces which control their voice and world.
The original lyric video for Letter to the Black World.
The subject matter of this song is much darker than the one preceding it, resulting in a stark contrast which I made an effort to highlight visually. Like before, the motif of the beeping phone is used to transition from one song to the next, so I allowed the previously chipper and expressive cell phone to enter this darker atmosphere, before breaking apart order to emphasize this strong tonal shift. Sorry!
The cell phone falling from the brighter environment of Triple Baka into a dark void.
Besides the use of animated censor bars to imply words, I found few elements in the original video to work with in the development of a visual identity for this portion. As a result, since this song and the previous one shared the voice of the Vocaloid Kasane Teto, I began with her magenta accent color used in Triple Baka, and focused on pairing it with darker tones and grungy textures. I also explored inverting these colors to give the visuals an unnatural and jarring feeling.
Lagtrain + Mashup Section
The next section of the set uses a more recent and relatively well-known song by the name of Lagtrain, which has seen many remixes or parodies of its recognizable monochrome illustrations and rough animation style.
The original lyric video for Lagtrain.
As I had already seen this particular video referenced many times before (typically recreated with a different character drawn in place of the original subject), I began by thinking about how I could adapt these visuals in a new way. After some experimentation, the result was to separate each frame of the girl’s animations into sections of railroads and, by continuously shifting the tracks, create rhythmic, disassembled versions of them.
However, one of the ideas I’m most happy with was recreating the squishy bouncing bird from the original video using beat_shobon’s mascot, and having him make a short cameo as a sort of easter egg in the background.
As Lagtrain plays out in the set, it transitions into a mashup with the previous song, Letter to the Black World, and eventually into one which incorporates musical motifs from Triple Baka as well. In order to highlight the remixing of these songs together, I combined visual elements from each of these sections, most notably the train tracks, censor bars and cell phone.
Mani Mani + Panopticon
Another section which I worked on later into the set mixes together two songs by the same producer, r-906. The first of these two, Mani Mani, primarily uses illustrations of a girl practicing traditional Japanese archery in its original lyric video. The lyric video for the second, Panopticon, focuses on a CCTV camera, and implies the presence of someone “watching you.”
The original lyric video for Mani Mani.
The original lyric video for Panopticon.
I aimed to create visuals which blended imagery from both of these videos in an interesting way. The idea I ran with was to use Mani Mani’s illustrations on a traditional-looking piece of pottery, which could rotate to show their progression, viewed by security cameras as if it were a valuable piece in a museum. While their relationship to one another in this way ended up a bit abstract or arbitrary, I felt it was a unique and interesting enough way to combine the two.
The full set has unfortunately not yet been made publicly available by Crypton. With some searching however, it may be possible to find a reuploaded recording of the livestream... But you didn't hear that from me!
