Music video Cartoon style

I have used final cut x and after effects

Your video has some very appealing qualities, let's take a closer look.

Before we begin - One technical issue - I've viewed this in multiple viewers & there is a marked audio sync issue. Their lips moving, don't match the words, in any language. The timing's off ever so slightly… I estimate the audio needs to be pulled about 0.3 seconds.

Ok, first off, I'm fond of the cartoon style, of course it was ground breaking with A-Ha's Take On Me, but since it's difficult to do effectively the concept hasn't yet become cliche or played out.

Your look & feel here is a lot lower budget but it has a quaint charm & innocence. Unfortunately I can't understand the language, so I'm unable to deal with your juxtaposition of words with images, to know how well you're telling your story, or even what the story is. However, there are several other aspects we can focus on.

The first is cultural relevance in the sense of meshing with current programmed stimuli. For instance, if you watch an old classic film like Gone With The Wind or It's A Wonderful Life, you'll immediately notice the shots are long, static & the pacing is slow, editing mostly predictable. Compare that with modern day MTV shows, news programs & even commercials, for the most part we're presently overly stimulated with flashing logos, PIP's, tickers, shaky cams & continually changing POV's. I'm not listing the obvious here to say one is better or worse, but merely the current trend conditions the response. You can't get a teenager these days to watch one of those classic films, there just isn't enough stimulation to hold their attention.

So, when we look at your piece, we're starting in what is extensibly an ADD media world culture, add to that a relatively slow song, that even contains some beautiful, but albeit lullaby sounds. Can you see where I'm going here? The song is slow, the pacing is slow, the visuals are soon predictable = loss of interest. Your audience is tuning out mentally maybe one minute in. I'll tell you why in .. a minute… hehe.

Of course, I know full well that you understand all this because I can see that you attempted to counter the static drawn images with watery flutter, continual light leaks & some vintage grain & celluloid scratches.

But first, here's what saves it. The girl. She's gorgeous & sounds angelic. Right when I was about to turn it off, she came on.

So let's get back to how you're losing them, the paying customers that is. I don't mean your clients, but rather the viewing public.

As mentioned we start with a slow track, then we add your rapping guy. Here's problem one; he doesn't have the rhythmic inflection of most rappers, there's little or no emphasis on the beat words, so it's all very monotone, one level, almost like a guy just talking. That's boring. Not to mention, he's not overly gifted in the charisma department. The medium long shot of him in profile is held way too long, he's much more interesting up close, but perhaps there's a way to vary that close up shot too...
Let's layer another component, black & white, which in this case (unlike Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris), is less interesting than color.

A possible solution to this could be the introduction of some subtle color shifts inside the black & white cut out area that he inhabits. Perhaps take the original color mask & have the opacity way down with real motion of clouds passing between him & us. This would give the appearance of his black & whiteness being continually pressed upon from beneath, with his real color self trying to break thru in expression. Some of the technical gurus here would be able to formulate the proper order & specifics to accomplish this effect. Once you have it operational, I'd adjust the speeds of the cloud flow to find the perfect tempo, perhaps even ramping up & down ever so slightly. This would be subtle enough to create curiosity in the mind of the viewer, maintaining engagement. I also like what this symbolizes, that our heroes are trapped in a conformist world - your wavering watery animated boxes, yet just below the surface, their souls are yearning to shine forth with love & the reality of their true selves. It's iconic.

I see that you've gone a little in this direction, with all the glows, light leaks, rainbow colorful flashes, but all of these are outside our characters. It would be nice to have sections where this is reversed, they are shining, out into their drab cartoon world, effecting it with their inner light.

I'll call his opening rap section Act 1, during which we have another directorial or editorial choice, which I call Either Or. Meaning you flip back & forth between images of him in his room or her, just waiting patiently for her section to begin. Even though I don't know what the song is about, I think it would be nice, even during this stage, to have a slight blending between their two separate worlds. Since he's in a squarish room with boxed sides & perspective, I'd love to see a faint image of her (50% opacity or less), almost wall height, flow around the walls keeping the perfect perspective & contours of the walls. It's like her image haunts him, he can't escape her memory in his room. This also ups our interest level, diminishing the boredom factor, & I think it accomplishes what you were going for with the jump cuts between the pair, in that of providing a preview of her coming attraction, as well as breaking the monotony.

This technique might also be used on your exterior box like building structure. The watery effect on it I love, but it would be nice to have traveling video images of them traversing the lines of perspective there too. Again, at less than 50% opacity, perhaps even 30%. Perhaps opacity is something to consider for the entire video, all your edges are very hard, so everyone looks cut out. That might have been the look you were going for, but when I see that hard edge to her hair, I lose some of the soft delicate beauty that makes a woman stand out from her surroundings. This crude frame around her is a visual interruption to break the lines of nature, it works against aesthetics in this instance. With your profile busts the hard white rim that surrounds the cut out, makes it look amateur or lazy as if the animator just didn't care. Yes, I realize you need your red headed man to stand out from the dark sky background, but perhaps experiment with gentle glows instead of a hard edge.

The color shifts I spoke of with breaking up his black & whiteness, would be perfect for her too. But instead of clouds, it would be nice to have some kind of glow effect perhaps. She really makes the song, & since her voice is so angelic, why not have some color & light trying to burst forth from her? Gold flickering thru her hair, light from her eyes & mouth, it all just amps up our sensory receptors, increasing interest levels. You've almost got something like this happening with the light leaks from the window behind her, but I think this could still be explored further & more effectively. The current gold & greenish light bleeding in from the windows behind her is somewhat incongruous as we've established that's his room where he's rapping. But nothing is going on up there of the magnitude necessary to create such supernova glows blasting her. However, if we did have the images of her glowing thru the walls, & the light straining to burst forth from him, we could reconcile the light balance with emotional content issue.

The walking images are not that effective. The going up stairs shots in a straight down POV just don't work at all. The side view over the pebbles with the same light leaks, is ok, not stellar, but workable.

Old style animation used to employ recurring images just to ease production. So you'd see the Flintstones running past the same house & tree several times. As mentioned, we've been conditioned to desire fresh new stimulus continually, thus your recurring images of low res, low detail cut out profile heads, shuts down interest. The modern mind begins to tune this out rapidly. The images need to be changing, transforming in a way that develops our interest with the progression of the song. These two images are difficult to reconcile as the singing couple, as they don't look like them. Not sure if this is intentional. The images are really unappealing, & since we return to them several times, the predictability raises the boredom tendency of tuning out. Another aspect of their unappealingness is that they have no eyes. Even in a still picture of a person, we are drawn to the eyes, never mind if it's a profile shot, the eyes tell the story. Where & how they are looking reveals their emotional state, we want to participate in the experience, to empathize, to feel something. The repetition factor also robs you of what was a nice section, that where he is painting the sky with his hand. This is a wonderful notion, beautifully executed, but when it is repeated, we resent it, so it's spoiled.

The kiss is resplendent with it's glorious crescendo in the song matching the animation (finally the profile busts change perspective, if even ever so slightly), but this section triumphs with the music perfectly most of all in classic symbolism, romantic idealism & iconic representation.

Nice work.



Global•Watch•Media
www.GWM2.com

Thank you for your comment and some very interesting points. I will definitely have those with me in my next project!! Thank you for your time and honest critic!!

Cheers Ogrindo

Yes, I always feel honesty is the best policy. Some people can't receive that though, unfortunately.

So, please tell me, Ogrindo, what is the language of the video? I'm guessing a Scandinavian language (Swedish, Finnish, etc).

Also, I'd be interested in more of your work as well as the artists featured...

The language is swedish so yes you are right about that!

Here are some links to a few other projects I've made










Cheers Ogrindo

Anyone wanting to create hand drawn animation looks from live video should seriously check out Studio Artist.

As usual, Ben's right on target.

Thanks for pointing us in this direction, Ben.
It looks great...

synthetik.com/