Rock’n’roll Animation

Make an animated music video in two weeks. This was the challenge given to four talented directors by SPOT and the Animation Workshop last February, and the results can be seen on spotfestival.dk this month.

Everyone knows animation takes time. 24 drawings per second equals 1440 a minute – that’s enough to make most of us break out in a sweat. So when SPOT and leading Nordic animation school The Animation Workshop asked four directors to do a

3-4 minute music video each in two weeks, the task must have seemed daunting.

Enter Andrey Zakirzyanov, a Russian animator known for his innovative, cheap and fast animation methods. With him as their guide and mentor, the four directors produced four very different music videos for SPOT 2012 acts Waldo & Marsha, Of the Wand and of the Moon, My Bubba & Mi, and Ulige numre.

The music videos are a joyful exploration of the interplay between sounds and images. They are also concrete examples of the wonderful things that can be done in the medium with animation in this post-million dollar videos for MTV-era. The videos will be launched during SPOT 2012 and made available online in the weeks leading up to the festival.

Meanwhile, SPOT and The Animation Workshop have even bigger things planned for next year. If all goes according to plan, these four music videos are only the beginning of an ambitious series of music video seminars in the years to come, exploring even further the dynamic synergy between music and animation and the communities behind the art forms. Stay tuned!