Animation On Tour : Yeezus Tour

I thought it would be interesting to see how animation can be incorporated in the set design and graphics of musical performances. For example, Kanye West’s tour “Yeezus” displays animations that were designed by a whole crew of designers and animators. Kanye worked with international stage designer Es Devlin to create psychedelic visions throughout his performances. Check out these pictures from the show!

  

Music and Animation

I think it’s important to recognize the connections between music and animation. Kanye West’s music video for “Heartless” is an inspiring example. Hype Williams produced and directed the music video, while he worked with the animation sources, Michael Chomet and Optic Flavor. They teamed up and used a technique called “rotoscoping”, which involves drawing over footage of live actors. This technique gives the animation a very life-like feature. After doing some research, I found out that the animation team was only given 10 days to hand-draw 3,000 frames of animation and backgrounds, which seems insane to me. Amazingly they were able to finish in time and create a music video that is an inspiring piece of artwork.

Enter the Void and All Of the Lights

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/enter-the-void/

I read a very interesting article this week on art of the title about a specific title sequence, from "Enter the Void", and a fairly prominent example of either homage or plagiarism, depending on your point of view. First, lets talk about the title sequence. It is incredibly aggressive, with heavy, bassy beats and almost unreadably text, mostly because of the speed. In fact I would argue the text is almost unimportant, because it streams by so fast one couldn't ever be expected to actually read the credits. However going frame by frame shows some really really cool designs for names, that are only on screen for literally a few frames. However the thing that the sequence really does best is play with the idea of a title sequence. It doesn't really accomplish crediting the actors and crew, what it does is be flashy, aggressive, and introduce the themes of the movie to the viewer right from the start

Another thing I want to touch on is a possible plagiarism of this sequence in a music video. The song, Kanye West's "All of the Lights", has a pretty great music video. However if you watch it, the opening sequence looks, almost shockingly so, exactly like the titles from enter the void. The graphic designers behind the music video said that it was just homage to the "enter the void" sequence. Tom Kan, graphics designer on Enter the Void, didn't seem to mind to the level of suing Kanye West, but did say "Plagiarism always devalues the imitator". He did go on to say that the expansion of the internet has allowed for collaboration and imitation between graphic designers like never before, which I think is a very interesting thought, and a very good point.

I'm-a Let You Finish...

But Kanye West and Marco Brambilla's music video for the song "Power" is the greatest music video of all time. No joke. This video screams excellence in the regular West-ian fashion, mixing themes from Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Greek Mythology, Occult tarot cards, and Egyptian Mythology. Although the song was created by Kanye West and the video was directed by artist Marco Brambilla, the real work is the visual effects in the video. It features moving images, slow-motion, mirrored duplicates, and a whole slue of other effects. Not to mention the censored version of the video has Mr. West's eyes illuminated, the background has changed from a stage setting to more of a cosmos, and all of the previously naked women are now donning very loosely draped cloth.

The Director's Cut

The visual effects are all done by ARTJAIL and additional computer graphics done by UVPHACTORY. First off, ARTJAIL is a visual effects boutique and art space, residing on the amorphous border of Chinatown and the L.E.S. NYC, that have done many of projects with numerous groups like Levi's, Nike, IBM, Google, Mentos, and a plethora of car companies. They were involved with many aspects of this project from pre-production to post and finishing, giving them a real understanding of what the Director's vision for the piece was. UVPHACTORY, on the other hand, is an award-winning motion design, visual effects, and production company. Working with Brambilla, they created additional 3D graphics for the video. The director wanted this video to be less of a music video and more of a piece of moving art where two artists collaborated to make something beautiful and they really did. If you don't believe me, watch both versions of the video then we'll talk.

The Censored Version

"Power" is the third song off of Kanye West's fifth studio album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" released in November 2010. The original music video for the song was released in August 2010.