After animating many Spotify Canvases, I decided to continue the aesthetic of my friend’s original music and create a lyric video for one of his songs, Driveway. This project was a Christmas gift for my friend and very much a learning (but rewarding) experience!
The project began in August 2023. I started by cutting out every lyric from the song, either the full word or the word spelt out with letters, from magazines lying around my house. If I couldn’t find a word or letter (ex. ‘d), I drew it myself on a piece of paper and cut it out. I carefully chose colors that went well together. Collecting the words alone took about a week. I glued the words to magnets so I would not lose them and that they wouldn’t blow over while I was animating on a white magnetic board.
From there I storyboarded, planned, and timed out the entire song on an animation software on my computer to the song. Once the timing was perfected, I drew the secondary bug characters that appear in the frame and a couple positions so they appeared to be animated. Every bug that shows up in the video is unique. This stage took about a week as well.
Then I stop motion animated the video by capturing it frame for frame with my DSLR camera to insure a high quality final product. I singlehandedly moved the letters and bugs, and shot the pictures, on all 2,706 frames. This process took 6 days and a lot of patience.
When the shooting was done, I gathered the clips together with Adobe Media Encoder. I edited the clips together in Adobe Premiere Pro to the song, reshooting and editing where it was needed. I color corrected the final product. Editing and adjustments took about a week as well. The project was finished in September 2023, but revised again in December 2023 before giving it to my friend.
Overall, this project was very satisfying for the amount of work I put into it! I am extremely proud of this animation!
All animation credit goes to me, song credit goes to Jay Moyer.
