Animation

Layla Atkinson

Rok Predin at Trunk Animation has created a vibrant, psychedelia-tinged animated video for Beatles' classic Here, There And Everywhere - the fourth that Trunk has created for the Fab Four in as many years, this time to coincide with&nbsp;the re-release of the monumental Revolver album.Predin's video employs rotoscoping of classic Beatles footage from the mid-Sixties period when the album was recorded, supplemented by newly created 3D imagery of the band, and outlines a story of how the Fab Four's final days as a touring outfit before heading into the studio, through a series of wonderfully delineated sequences that also nod stylistically to the iconic cover of Revolver.&nbsp;[imgtoken data:1]The starting point for the making of the Here, There And Everywhere video was Paul McCartney, briefing Trunk on&nbsp;how much he always loved the visuals of the rotoscoped dancers from the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds section of Yellow Submarine, beautifully art directed by the late Heinz Edelmann. He also wanted to take the viewer on a journey of The Beatles world tour.&nbsp;Two obstacles stood in front of the Trunk team: a limited amount of useable footage for the rotoscoping technique, and the 6 weeks until&nbsp;delivery.&nbsp;With limited footage to rotoscope, and a yet a big story to tell, the team had to come up with a way to re-create a rotoscoped look for some of the most recognisable faces in music history and fit them in with the existing archive footage. Having hit upon the idea of using 3D versions of The Beatles to fill the gap, they discovered that there was hardly anything in existence which were realistic, as opposed to caricatured versions of the band.&nbsp;“What we needed was a convincing 3D sculpt of each of the band,&nbsp;so that we could animate them, and then treat them in the same way that we would treat the live action footage,” explains Predin, who has previously worked with the likes of Elton John, The Rolling Stones, and U2.&nbsp;Thankfully it turned out that Apple Corps own archive held everything that was useable.&nbsp;[imgtoken data:2]Using the references from the extraordinary archive, modeller Omar Lawal set about sculpting the band over a couple of weeks, before Alan Towndrow got to rigging. Animator Alex Watson then put the characters into testing and we were able to get the comp team their first look at the raw materials. Rok led the compositing and tried numerous ways of recreating the rotoscoped look the team had originally provided as a test.&nbsp;Ultimately, by using a multitude of processes, he managed to recreate the line work that was coming from the rotoscoping.“We were always confident that we could recreate the look," he notes. "But nowadays these things come down to a near mathematical formula, finding just the right levels of multiple effects, and balancing their outputs”. This technical R&amp;D just opened&nbsp;the first door to the most important part - telling&nbsp;the story. Rok and producer Richard Barnett had both watched Peter Jackson's amazing ‘The Beatles: Get Back’ documentary,&nbsp;and reminded themselves of Ron Howard's 2016 doc ‘Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years’.[imgtoken data:3]"Watching that again really reminds you of what those four guys went through, what the music meant to so many people, and what they were doing in the world at that time, which was a complete revolution," says Barnett.&nbsp;"I remember a clip of George saying that 'I always felt sorry for Elvis 'cause he was on his own. He had his guys with him, but there's only one Elvis. Nobody else knew what he felt like.' At least the band had each other. And that was a point that really hit home for us.” Rok encapsulates that emotion in a poignant section in the video showing the four of them gathered around a table in a hotel suite as the environment around them constantly changes reflecting their physical journey from New York to Tokyo via Paris, Sydney and Rome. The cityscapes were superbly drawn by Sara Savelj. Revolver&nbsp;changed everything - for the band and for pop music.&nbsp;To reflect that,&nbsp;the video uses a stunning colour palette that, whilst harking back to 1960’s psychedelia, is firmly rooted in the 21st century. Rok says:&nbsp;“Visual language is a contemporary interpretation of styles from the past using new technologies, complementing the sonic transformation that the song Here, There and Everywhere has undergone for the new release of Revolver.”[imgtoken data:4] It was important for Rok to capture the hard slog that being on tour can be, and what keeps you going whilst away. He talks from experience as he toured the former Yugoslavia playing in his dad's rock band back in the late 90's.“We imagined the love that you've left behind, in the video this developed into this magical dancer animated by Eamonn O’Neill that each of the band see separately, before realising they are all seeing her together," says Predin.&nbsp;"The dancer is the colour, the light, and the inspiration that keeps them going, and once back in the UK, she disperses into Abbey Road studios, representing the bands renewed enthusiasm for their music, but also the end of touring.”&nbsp;Alongside Jonathan Clyde at Apple Corps the Trunk team have previously worked on the re-release of The White Album,&nbsp;producing videos for Glass Onion, Back in the U.S.S.R., and then Here Comes The Sun&nbsp;from Abbey Road. Those three stunning videos continue to rack up views in the millions and there is every hope that Here, There and Everywhere,&nbsp;commissioned by Sophie Hilton at Universal, will follow suit. Producer Richard notes: “When I sat revising for my exams back in 1996, I never thought that 26 years later we would have produced 4 music videos for the very tracks I was listening to.”&nbsp;

United Kingdom

Rok Predin

Trunk Animation

Richard Barnett

Sara Savelj Predin

Omar Lawal

Alan Towndrow

Alex Watson

Eamonn O'Neil

Leslie Dart

Roto

Adrian Winter

Aaron Bremner

Jonathan Clyde

Apple Corps

Sophie Hilton

Universal Music

Rock

The Beatles 'Here, There And Everywhere' by Rok Predin

The Beatles - Here, There and Everywhere

Paul Woolford&#39;s banging house track gets a mesmerizing visual-cum-lyric video by Layla Atkinson at Trunk Animation, combining&nbsp;stock footage with hand-crafted typography for the words.&nbsp;Atkinson gets into the mindset of the song with a contrast between black and white &#39;city&#39; footage - implying the confining mature of day-to-day life - with the expressive colour and beauty of the natural world.And with the song&#39;s much-repeated lyrical message, that allowed the director to&nbsp;spend time creating each word by hand: each line is created from a stencil that created many copies of the word, each coloured with sponged paint. The copies were then looped, resulting in the finished, uniquely colourful lyrics.

Danielle Barnes

Spinnin' Records

Paul Woolford 'Hang Up Your Hangups' (Camelphat Remix) by Layla Atkinson

Paul-Woolford-'Hang-Up-Your-Hangups-(camelphat-Remix)'-by-Layla-Atkinson

Two of Trunk&#39;s directors team up to collaborate for the first time here for the 25th anniversary of Julian Lennon&#39;s Saltwater.Using a combination of illustrations, textures, scanned photographs, vector graphics and 3D models, this psychedelic collage that follows a young woman too distracted by her phone to notice the world around her (both the good and the bad), adding a new layer to the song&#39;s message of conservation.With subtle nods to past events (and even a Beatles reference or two) thrown into the mix, the video&#39;s journey is one to pay close attention to.&nbsp;

Jock Mooney

Simona Ciraolo

Mehmet Ulusahin

Dick Carruthers

Julian Lennon 'Saltwater 25' by Layla Atkinson & Jock Mooney

Julian Lennon - Saltwater 25

Layla Atkinson and her team at Trunk have created an impressive labour of love for folk legend Shirley Collins&#39;s Pretty Polly.Shot on film over two days with a locked-off camera and no edits or cutaways (during the hottest September weather for a century), this handmade piece of puppetry has too many moving parts to comprehend. A wonderfully authentic feeling handmade show with painted sets, creative use of lighting and charming use of traditional &#39;Jig Doll&#39; puppets. And that&#39;s perfect for Collins&#39; version of an 18th century ballad from the Appalachians.<a href="https://vimeo.com/185965429">As this behind the scenes video illustrates</a>, Atkinson and her team have delivered a very complex piece of work, and yet made it look so simple.[imgtoken data:1]

Bart McDonagh

Pete Ellmore

Jonathan Yates

Adam Bell

John Harmer

Rebecca Manley

Jonny T at Glassworks

Shirley Collins 'Pretty Polly' by Layla Atkinson

Shirley Collins | Pretty Polly

Director Rok Predin at Trunk has animated Scottish artist&nbsp;Steve Mason&#39;s second single Alive&nbsp;from his&nbsp;third solo album Meet the Humans. &nbsp;The video is a homage to 1990&rsquo;s video-gaming, but&nbsp;rather than employing&nbsp;the iconic platform style as seen in Trunk&rsquo;s recent video&nbsp;for Blur&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2015/06/05/blur-ong-ong-tony-hung" target="_blank">Ong Ong</a>,&nbsp;Rok adopted the isometric look of early 16-bit video games such as Street Fighter and Sim City, &nbsp;lovingly&nbsp;recreated&nbsp;using Cinema 4D and After Effects.The song&rsquo;s theme drove the concept of the video, which sees a&nbsp;game in which each character is held in&nbsp;stasis by a virus that hovers over them. To break free, the characters first need to understand what is keeping them captive wearing&nbsp;a pair of glasses that reveal the virus, before&nbsp;having a big,&nbsp;all out scrap!&nbsp;Trunk&rsquo;s producer Richard Barnett notes, &ldquo;To create a well-known, classic look, such as a 90&rsquo;s console game, and to do it with an amount of believability, is always tricky. We used a number of rules and techniques to help us, such as an aged colour palette, balanced pixilation, and we were always very conscious of the audiences point of view when playing those games. We recreated that feel by using a lot of aerial shots that moved through the city and side on fixed shots that we all remember well from playing the games endlessly as kids.&rdquo;

Jonathan Bradshaw

Domino

Caroline Tarrago

Lesley Dart

Barnaby Templer

Fonicart

Steve Mason 'Alive' by Rok Predin

Steve-Mason-'Trunk-Animation’s-Rok-Predin-Creates-A-‘controlled’-Music-Video-For-Steve-Mason.'-by-Rok-Predin

Having excelled with their lyric videos for the likes of Rolling Stones, Vampire Weekend and Lily Allen, Trunk Animation have been called upon to create one for Kylie&#39;s cover of Yazoo&#39;s Only You - which became a Christmas No. 1 for The Flying Pickets in the early Eighties &ndash; from her new Christmas album.&nbsp;But rather than making it text-heavy, director Layla Atkinson&nbsp;has taken a more pared-back approach. If the Flying Pickets accapella version was unusual at the time, the surprise here is that Kylie is duetting with James Corden - now a chat show host in the US.&nbsp;Using After Effects Layla concentrated on animating two simple star elements that represented Kylie and James.The stars&#39; journey conveys the relationship of the two performers captured in the duet, and a&nbsp;simple typeface keeps&nbsp;the focus of the video on their interaction, rather than solely on the text. And it all feels perfectly festive.

Alasdair Brotherston

Daniel Negret

Andrew J Law

Parlophone

Kylie Minogue ft James Corden 'Only You' (lyric video) by Layla Atkinson

Kylie ~ Only You

David Gilmour&#39;s new single Rattle That Lock has been paired with this epic animated music video,&nbsp;the&nbsp;result of a fruitful&nbsp;collaboration between legendary creative&nbsp;director and graphic designer&nbsp;Aubrey Powell of&nbsp;Hipgnosis and&nbsp;directors&nbsp;Alasdair + Jock&#39;s&nbsp;team at Trunk Animations.Aubrey Powell and the&nbsp;late&nbsp;Storm Thorgerson formed the art design group Hipgnosis in&nbsp;1968 and are responsible for some of the most creative, evocative and iconic&nbsp;album covers in the history of&nbsp;Rock,&nbsp;creating game-changing artwork for the likes of&nbsp;Led&nbsp;Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath, 10CC, and Pink Floyd.&nbsp;David Gilmour,&nbsp;singer, songwriter and virtuoso guitarist as well as&nbsp;a&nbsp;core member of Pink Floyd, has&nbsp;forged a strong creative relationship with&nbsp;design group across the years and&nbsp;easily&nbsp;trusted&nbsp;Powell with&nbsp;the visuals for his latest solo project.Gilmour&#39;s song&nbsp;-&nbsp;topped off with lyrics by Polly Sampson -&nbsp;was inspired by an unlikely mix of the French SNCF rail announcement&nbsp;jingle and&nbsp;Book Two of&nbsp;John Milton&rsquo;s epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost. The&nbsp;poem, which sets out to deal with the grandest of themes, concerns&nbsp;the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and&nbsp;Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.With a brief to reference Gustave Doré&rsquo;s sensational mid&shy;-19th century illustrations for&nbsp;Paradise Lost, the project needed a team who could not only bring the intricately detailed&nbsp;etchings to life but could do so in a manner that captured the depth, drama and scale of&nbsp;both Gilmour&rsquo;s song and Milton&#39;s poem.With the creative bar set&nbsp;high,&nbsp;Alasdair + Jock&nbsp;revelled&nbsp;in the&nbsp;opportunity to develop the imagery and weave some of their favourite art references into&nbsp;the mix. Goya, Bosch, Piranesi, Bernini and John Martin were all heavily referenced, as&nbsp;were smaller details from the famous &lsquo;She Wolf&rsquo; Roman statue, a subtle skeletal&nbsp;illustration from &lsquo;The Birth of Venus&rsquo; by Botticelli and an Otto Dix inspired dead horse.

Alasdair + Jock

Aubrey Powell

Stuart Doig

Carlos De Faria

Alex Potts

Clélia Leroux

Rachel Callinan

Ana Garcia

Théo Gremillet

Laura Ireland

Reina Shibahara

Andy Hague

Fonic

Marty O’Brien

Matt Hare

Glassworks

David Gilmour 'Rattle That Lock' by Alasdair + Jock

David Gilmour - Rattle That Lock

In what is quite possibly Blur&#39;s most heartwarming video since Coffee &amp; TV, the band&#39;s creative director Tony Hung and animation directors&nbsp;Layla Atkinson and Pete Mellor from Trunk&nbsp;have created a delightful videogame homage for Ong Ong,&nbsp;from the new Blur album The Magic Whip - and a cute spin-off&nbsp;from Hung&#39;s album cover art.Just like classic games&nbsp;such as Mario Bros, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, the&nbsp;irresistible&nbsp;hero Mr OK, a bouncing ball - which can be seen on the cover - has to cross various levels, each with it&#39;s own &#39;boss&#39; that he has to defeat in order to be reunited with his kidnapped girlfriend.&nbsp;Each boss was&nbsp;characterised in digital form by Peepshow Collective&rsquo;s Spencer Wilson -&nbsp;but also have their &#39;real&#39; counterparts in live-action sequences bookending the animation, played by the band themselves. And yes, that is Damon Albarn waddling around as Mr Cream the ice cream...&nbsp;Wonderfully silly, and perfect for one of Blur&#39;s rare pure-pop moments.

Tony Hung

Pete Mellor

Spencer Wilson

Amy Sutton

Jonathan Sidwell

Phil Poole

Sussie Juhlin-Wallén

William Nichols

Eleven Mgmt

Blur 'Ong Ong' by Tony Hung

BLUR | ONG ONG

Some of the most enduring iconography associated with The Rolling Stones comes from their classic album Sticky Fingers: the&nbsp;Andy Warhol-designed cover of the bulging jean crotch shot &ndash; that originally came with working zip fly; and&nbsp;the Stones&#39;&nbsp;famous lips logo, designed by&nbsp;John Pasche,&nbsp;also made its first appearance on that album.&nbsp;&nbsp;Now the team at Trunk Animation, led by director Rok Predin, have created a new lyric video for a previously unreleased&nbsp;acoustic version of Wild Horses,&nbsp;included on the special edition of Sticky Fingers coming out soon to celebrate its 45th anniversary. It&nbsp;follows Trunk&#39;s highly successful lyric video for Doom and Gloom (the most watched video on the Stones&#39; YouTube channel). And elements of both the original album artwork, and additional work created for the new re-release, have contributed to&nbsp;the new video.&nbsp;Warhol&#39;s zip is the&nbsp;motif throughout the whole video. Not surprisingly, the Stones&#39; lips also feature prominently - including as the fob on the zip, that reveals and obscures lyrics.&nbsp;And Trunk&#39;s Layla Atkinson, who&nbsp;developed the artwork for the video, used&nbsp;elements from the 100-page booklet that accompanies the new release, including its typeface.&nbsp;Created using Cinema 4D and After Effects, the team used the track&#39;s gentle feel to pace the video while certain lyrics suggested themes and movements.&nbsp;Photographs of the band were manipulated by the team and degraded in Photoshop, as was the typeface, to fit into the overall look and feel of the finished video.[imgtoken data:2]​&ldquo;Some jobs are just very special and this was certainly one of them,&quot; says Rok Predin. &quot;Although we had worked for the Stones before, working on an album that is so famous was ever so slightly intimidating! We knew we had to include a zip, which referenced Andy Warhol&rsquo;s iconic artwork that was used for the original album cover, and the typeface from the new booklet that accompanies the re-release of the album. Other than that we were pretty much given a free hand.&rdquo;&ldquo;While we love all the projects at Trunk it&rsquo;s always nice to be asked by rock royalty to get involved with a release,&quot; adds producer Richard Barnett.&nbsp;&quot;Layla, Rok and the team have done a great job. The track was originally a lullaby to Keith Richards&rsquo;s son Marlon, and the tender pace of this video is far softer than the passionate pace of our previous Stones vid. So far it has been a very exciting time at Trunk with a big studio move just after finishing our Coldplay project, and now seeing in our new studio with a job for the Rolling Stones, it&rsquo;s been a great start to the year!&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Nic Sanchez

Emily Tedrake

Polydor

The Rolling Stones 'Wild Horses' (lyric video) by Rok Predin

Alasdair+Jock&#39;s superb animation that accompanied a full 43 minute stream of Coldplay&#39;s sixth album Ghost Stories saw the album go to No 1 in over 100 countries this week.&nbsp;The iTunes stream was available for a full week ahead of release and Coldplay&#39;s vast army of fans took to social media to voice their approval.The directing duo brought to life&nbsp;Mila Fürstová&#39;s brilliant album artwork - a detailed etching of a pair of angels wings over an ocean -&nbsp;to stunning effect.&nbsp;The film used a multitude of animated techniques&nbsp;and a team of 10 animators and art workers using 3D, 2D cuts outs, and classical 2D hand drawn came together to create the&nbsp;50 individual sections. Each section had to be animated in such a way that they could be looped, ranging from 30 secs to an impressive 2 minutes. Once animated, each section then had to go through a heavy compositing and effects stage in order to pull all the different techniques together, and make sure the line style in the animation was exactly the same as that of the album artwork. To help build an overall visual narrative for the album, the team slowly revealed more and more detail as the tracks progress allowing the viewer to travel in and out of what is in essence a world within a world. The team also utilised time-lapse photography and SFX to create the world &lsquo;outside&rsquo; the wings. Time lapse clouds, sea, and mist are mixed with affected art worked shooting stars and a waxing and waning moon which casts the wings into darkness as track 5 Midnight&nbsp;progresses in the middle of the album.Aladair&nbsp;notes: &quot;It was a massive undertaking but we wanted to create something unique for the album, and we loved the idea of bringing this image to life with some really beautiful movement, in a way that matched the intricate and complex look of Mila&rsquo;s artwork.&quot;&nbsp;Producer Richard Barnett adds &quot;The finished project has to be up there in our top 5 along with the projections for Madness at the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Rok&rsquo;s lyric vid for The Rolling Stones, our visuals for Keith Urban at the Country Music Awards, and of course Elton John&rsquo;s Million Dollar Piano visuals!&quot;.Below is an excerpt from the stream that accompanies opening track Always In My Head. A behind-the-scenes can be viewed <a href="http://vimeo.com/95978495" target="_blank">here.</a>

Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits

Zoe Matzko

Jeroen Jaspaert

Aaron Lampert

Valentina Delmiglio

Mo Hague

Chris Sayer

Pedro Lino

Chillibean

Sam Seager

Mila Fürstová

Coldplay 'Ghost Stories/Always In My Head' by Alasdair+Jock

Coldplay 'Ghost Stories' Album Animation Stream

Echoing their brilliant projections onto Buckingham Palace for Madness&rsquo;&nbsp;<a href="http://vimeo.com/76447244" target="_blank">It Must Be Love</a>&nbsp;shown during the Queens Diamond Jubilee concert,&nbsp;Alasdair+Jock deliver this fun and lively lyric video for Lily Allen&#39;s upcoming single Air Balloon.To meet tight deadlines, the promo was turned around in seven days and features the duo&#39;s distinctive style along with their vibrant colour palette.&nbsp;The typography, partially inspired by American artist Jeff Koons, is rendered in balloon writing, with sentences filling and deflating&nbsp;and bursting with little puffs of smoke... &nbsp;

Lily Allen 'Air Balloon' by Alasdair+Jock

Lily Allen- Air Balloon Lyric Video

Promonews Podcast

Layla Atkinson

Animation

Videos featuring Layla Atkinson

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