In January 2024, I was approached by Flamingosis to produce a new music video that would release alongside his latest album, Better Will Come. We agreed the song of choice would be one of my personal faves: "Soulsearcher".
"Now is the time to inquire within and take the best course of action in choosing the right direction for yourself. The very first steps to take towards a new path can be overwhelming yet exciting, difficult yet rewarding, scary yet beautiful. There's people out there who believe that you can do it and want you to be happy (including me yo!)." - Flamingosis
With this in mind, I thought of the idea of going on a personal road trip as a way to find one's self, and that naturally lead to the perfect visual reference to set the scene.
This is the cover for his 2018 album, "Flight Fantastic", featuring artwork by Hiroshi Nagai. The moody purple dusk setting at the beach complimented the vibe of the song so well, so I knew immediately that I wanted to try creating a whole animated world based off this. It also was the beginning of my wanting to jam as many references to previous work in this video as possible.
Here are some additional references I used to craft this world. I tried to blend this really nice City Pop vibe with character and vehicle designs that were inspired by older anime and manga, mainly Akira Toriyama's work.
Hiroshi Nagai
Hiroshi Nagai
Eizin Suzuki
Eizin Suzuki
Akira Toriyama
Akira Toriyama
Ardhira Putra
A freakin' car
CONCEPTING AND STORYBOARD
These are the first concept sketches I made: The Car and Flamingosis himself. The Car is modeled after a modified old Suzuki Sidekick, which already has fairly stylized proptortions.
360 Render of the main heroes! Shaders and all.
Storyboard. Aside from a few adjustments and extra shots it remained largely unchanged from the final video.
ASSET CREATION
The entire music video was built and rendered out of Cinema4D using their powerful Sketch & Toon materials. Some assets, like the buildings and signs, were modeled directly in C4D, while more organic elements like the plants were sculpted in VR using Substance 3D Modeler.
Fun fact: Only the signs have any sort of UVs, the rest of the textures are either procedural or projections.
I just call this the confetti realm because it's just a bunch of... confetti basically.
VR modeling is fun. It's like hand illustration but 3D.
GRAPHIC DESIGN + REFERENCES GALORE
Being a fan of Flamingosis' music for so many years, I thought it would be fitting to incorporate as many references to previous works as possible, as an extra layer of illustrating the "soul" in the title. Starting with "Flight Fantastic" being the visual north star, it was fun to see what additional references and easter eggs I could add. From the dawn sky tones being based on "Mood Provider 3", to all the signs and floating pieces making callouts to other albums or songs, there's something for fans old and new to appreciate.
The signs scattered throughout were a great way to explore remixed designs of older albums, references to other songs or interests, and inside jokes.
The house on an island is a real mood...
And of course...
THE SOUL WITHIN
This shot appears at the peak of the song, when the lyrics drop and we're treated to a nice piano solo. To compliment this, I thought about what it would be like to give that soul a tangible form, and what sort of environment to make surrounding. The etherial, musical, spacey environment with a massive glowing flamingo was a nice contrast to the otherwise very grounded scenes we had gone though so far. Matching the piano keys to the song itself was a fun challenge as well.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
After 2-3 months of sculpting, material developing, animating, and rendering, we finally have our finished video. Most shots are created as looping animations to cut from one to the next. This way, they can serve a double-purpose as seamless loops to be displayed in concerts!
CREDITS
Director/Animator: David Mellor
Title Graphic Design: Tom Goulet
Special thanks to Gavin Shapiro for providing his dancing flamingos.
And of course, HUGE thanks for Flamingosis for the opportunity!