Music Video Favorites: Birdy Nam Nam’s Wonderful Animated World
BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.
This is the music video you’ve always dreamed of getting when your track gets a music video. It’s been round the Web a few months ago, but I only discovered it today via the lovely 8-bit punk Anamanaguchi (see our interview), on their Twitter feed. It’s like what you worked out when bored in grade school Chemistry class with your best friend who planned to become a comic book artist for a career, scrawled in the margins of your notebook. There’s an evil Egyptian alien sarcophagus shooting what appears to be evil sugar cubes from orbit. There’s a crazy space alien superhero who’s all Shriner and Freemason and gets special powers when he replaces his hand with a vegetable squid … thing. And good triumphs over evil, which is what we all root for. It’s the sort of trippy album art we don’t get any more, but animated.
The animation, creative direction, and concept are by Will Sweeney, who under the name Alakazam Label makes fantastic, far-out illustrations, toys, and animations with edible acid-neon colors, and hamburgers for heads, and organic tendrils like pasta or vines or tentacles wrapped through the dreamscapes. You can see more of Sweeney’s work:
Steve Scott directed the video, did concept design, and did his own compositing, which shows you he knows his stuff. Scott, based in Australia, has his own brilliantly wonderful stuff.
Birdy Nam Nam are a French DJ crew, cool enough to name drop Peter Sellers references in their actual name. They’re proper turntablists in a world in which that has become a rarity, with the prizes to match. Remix did a good write-up of their work in 2006; the best way to keep up with them now is to follow MySpace and, unfortunately for the world’s other continents, to live in Europe.
Justice did the production, in case that wasn’t evident; the marriage works.
And, seriously, special squid vegetable hands?
Credits:
Will Sweeney – Concept designer and Illustrator
Steve Scott – Director, Concept designer and compositorJames Littlemore – Editor / Compositor
Geoff McDowall – Animator
Ed Willmore – Animator
Roland Edwards – Animator
Dele Nuga – Digital PainterLottie Hope – Producer
Dan O’Rourke – Executive ProducerNot To Scale – production
Thanks to Big Active
Theoretically, all of this could have gone on Create Digital Motion, but I love watching a video that makes me feel differently about the music. Having that experience, to me, is what it’s all about.
19 Comments
Leave a CommentDarren Landrum
That reminds me an awful lot of Fantastic Planet. Given the French connection (no pun intended), I think this is not a coincidence. Very well done!
September 16, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
Janne Iivonen
I thought it was bit like La planète sauvage too. Really cool video!
September 17, 2009 @ 2:36 am
c64
Awesomeness! I whish there was more stuff like this aired on MTV then all that bling bling honey honey stuff.
September 17, 2009 @ 3:11 am
Suecae
No need for drugs when you have videos such as these!
September 17, 2009 @ 9:02 am
Martin
it’d be much better if someone could go to justice’s studio and turn down the release time on their kick-sidechained compressor.
September 17, 2009 @ 10:18 am
Peter Kirn
@Martin: Ha! Well, you may need a different squid-hand attachment for that…
September 17, 2009 @ 10:25 am
tekcor
soooo good!
September 17, 2009 @ 10:39 am
BirdFLU
Birdy Num Num (how it’s pronounced in the movie) is the funniest scene in that movie. Definitely worth a rental if you haven’t seen it.
September 17, 2009 @ 11:55 am
corticyte
this video’s been around for a while now…
…but its so awesome it doesn’t matter!
September 17, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
johan
hehe, that compressor sounds really funny.. cool video though!
September 17, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
mode
i like this.
so… what exactly did Birdy Nam Nam contribute to the track? all the sounds are classic Justice. i’m not hearing anything that sounds like sampled vinyl. anyone care to clarify?
September 17, 2009 @ 7:42 pm
mode
OK, I hear some scratching now. My bad.
September 17, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
netch
Beurk… French are stuck in the 80’s. Daft Punk rehash
Never impressed by BirdyNamNam ’s gigs.
September 17, 2009 @ 8:40 pm
mrcairosfriend
Superjail is LIGHT YEARS ahead of this. Frankly, this looks like a weak and lame rip-off of Christy Karacas’ stuff.
September 17, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
Peter Kirn
I quite like Christy Karacas, but I’m not sure I see these as equivalent? Can you explain / be specific about pieces?
Hey, I’m always happy to hear about “but what you should really see is this…”; I don’t think there’s any harm in that.
@netch: Jeez, do we always have to hate on a particular country, though? You’d never say, “Those Tasmanians. Always the same.” There’s a scene there, I agree, but…
September 17, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
netch
@Peter : I’m French ;-)
But I found that many bands a la French Touch like Justice etc..
sound alike . Again, rehash of Daft.
I rarely say that: I do dislike those two bands and don’t find this video exciting a bit.
I just don’t find the aesthetic of the clip that great.
September 18, 2009 @ 7:41 am
Peter Kirn
@netc: Ha! Well, we’re always the worst critic of our own people. I get your meaning, though, and I can see that that can get tiresome if you get too much of it. I’m really about the illustration here, particularly the whole body of the stuff the folks are doing.
September 18, 2009 @ 11:39 am
bladerunner
didn’t really work for me. there is much, much better animation work around imo. music does not reflect the video (and vice versa) at all. track is okay but relies too heavily on compression (as does so much of this kind of daft punky influenced stuff). overall… meh, s’okay
September 18, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
volkuro
Does anyone find it ironic that the one track produced by Justice for this album features a sugar cube spitting spaceship/man hybrid that looks somewhat similar to the artwork from Yukseks ‘Away from the sea’ album cover? And as far as I’m aware Yuksek produced the majority of the album this is from. Great clip regardless.
September 24, 2009 @ 1:54 am
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