How to Animate an Original Music Video? Experimentation.

Music videos are a powerful tool for musicians, helping them to raise their profile and directly communicate their identity. The landscape for music videos has changed drastically in the last ten years since the rise of YouTube and the fall of MTV.

In the digital age, visual artists have to create original, attention-grabbing films with much smaller budgets, and often non-existent lead times.

So why bother doing music videos? Because they are pure, unadulterated creativity — they are fun! Well, they are when you’re not hanging around for a 12-hour render, anyway..

Many creatives are experimenting with real-time engines like Notch to create exciting animations and visuals effects, and turn the traditional production workflow on its head!

We spent some time finding out why animators love using Notch for music videos:

Real-time workflow

‘I wanna really, really, really wanna WYSIWYG ah.’ (Spice Girls)

As Notch founder, Matt’s famous saying goes: ‘How off-putting would it be to play the guitar and not hear the notes you play till 5 minutes later?’ Well, poor animators have to wait hours till their designs render out. Changed your mind on the colour palette?… Better queue the next render and load up something binge-worthy on Netflix.

It’s hard to exercise your gorgeous creative muscles when you can’t try something out for size, just listen to Alex, he’s fabulous…

“I use Notch principally because I find it extremely efficient when blocking out visual concepts. Because of the WYSIWYG workflow, I don’t have to waste time “testing” renders to see how my project will look in the end. I can try out different elements on the fly without destroying any previous work, which lets me get more creative with my ideas.”
Alex Vlair, Notch Designer, Amontik Animation

Or Patrick Defasten, he knows what he’s talking about:

“The satisfaction of watching a scene come to life in real-time, with a high degree of finish, is why I love to work in Notch. You’re free to build without waiting for render previews. The complex and chaotic nature of this visual design would not have been possible in ‘classic animation or rendering software’. I would have been less patient and slower working on the scene.”
— Patrick Defasten, Notch Designer, Defasten

WYSIWYG = experimentation

‘Never say never, but nevertheless I, Never say no to experiments.’ (Tinchy Stryder)

So you’ve got your real-time workflow down. The little practical things which ate up all your time can now be adjusted in an instant. What do I do with all this time? Director Dylan and Notch Designer Cody did a pretty good job working that out:

“This project was largely exploratory for the both of us. Dylan had a few ideas for effects that he was curious about, but ultimately it came down to just trying out different effects and seeing what we liked. The ease and speed of Notch’s interface allowed us to experiment with several effects in real-time and make decisions based on what we saw.”
— Cody Sampson, Notch Designer, All of it Now

“The video came out with the amount of energy and fun that I had imagined, but it ended up looking very different than its original inception. The whole process was filled with experimentation and trust. I learned a lot about going with gut feelings when it comes to developing the project and different effects.”
— Dylan Gephart, Freelance Director

With Notch, you can VFX the sh*t out of it

‘Freedom! Have some faith in the sound.’ (George Michael)

You’ve got all the creative freedom in the world, but sometimes it’s nice to have a cheeky little pre-set that does the job for you. Notch has a formidable bank of VFX which you can overlay until your baby heart’s content. Notch was created to meet the demand of live concert touring, and it’s audio-reactive options fit perfectly with music video design. Fabio and Michelle had loads of fun with Notch’s audio-reactive nodes:

“We used a combination of procedurals, deformers with sound effectors to create motion. The sound modifier helped us to bring a new life to the animation. Sometimes it was applied directly to the effect and sometimes to the lights and cameras.”
— Fabio Catapano, Freelance Notch Designer

“Throughout production, we leaned heavily on Notch’s audio-reactive features. The ability to use a sound modifier to drive the value of any parameter on any node allows us to create a wide variety of audio-reactive effects. Many of the scenes we created are a combination of Notch’s Particle and Field systems to create free-flowing organic effects driven by the audio.”
— Michelle Penland, Notch Designer, Integrated Visions and Choreograf Studios

And the cherry on top

‘I’m not a one-hit-wonder, they know all my stuff.’ (French Montana ft. Drake)

Once you’ve created your animation, rendered it out, uploaded it to YouTube and watched it rack up the likes that’s it, right? Wrong, Notch is a multi canvas tool, your design can be converted to VR, 3D Stereoscopic or used for live VJing during a gig:

“A second big reason why I’m using Notch is the flexibility between creating rendered graphics and real-time graphics. Although I’ve created this video to be rendered out, at the end of the day, I will still have a real-time ready scene in Notch. We also do live VJing for the band, which means we will be able to recycle these visuals into a live set and create a cohesive experience between their live performance and their online presence.”
— Alex Vlair, Notch Designer, Amontik Animation

It’s fast, you’re having fun

‘You’re a rock star, get the show on, get paid.’ (Smash Mouth)

To sum it up, there’s a whole range of inbuilt VFX which make it possible for Notch designers to give any video the X-Factor in just a few clicks. Using Notch’s real-time workflow, there’s more time to explore creative options and come up with original, attention-grabbing looks.

Many of the designers we interviewed have been developing a visual narrative in an ongoing collaboration with the artist.

In the digital age where video content needs to have creative quality and be in quantity, Notch is the perfect tool for creating a visual landscape for any artist.