A flying pirate ship, à la Disney's Treasure Planet, chases down a shirtless youth in the new music video for the newly released single for Australian indie rock group Gang of Youths, "What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out?" Watching the animated short, which debuted yesterday on Vinyl Me, Please, feels like reading a sinister graphic novel, its scenes taking dark visual cues from animated series like ReBoot and Evangelion. It was put together by self taught animator Thomas Rawle, a.k.a., Dreller, who says the music reminded him of "the dread of running out of life in your life." In recent years, Rawle has been slowly developing his own process of 3D and 2D mixed-media animation. Employing a combination of After Effects, Blender, and data from an online motion capture library, Rawle explains that the body movements seen in the video are a hybrid of mocap data and manual animation. "I kinda imagined a boy on the moon who has to fly down to save earth from a strange fire, he's chased by giant flying sailboats which eventually end up being his vessel for rescue," he says.
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When the band reached out to Rawle they sent a number of paintings by Los Angeles artist, Norton Wisdom, for Rawle to use as references. There was also a desire to avoid a fully narrative-driven piece, which the director hopes will allow everyone to get something different, "like an animated Rorschach test," he explains.Check out the video in full below:
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