In the summer of 2021, shortly following my graduation from UCA, I was approached to create a short visualiser for electronic music duo Adventure Club's upcoming release 'Here.' I was given instruction to work in a visual style loosely inspired by anime, as well as suggestions for the basic story beats. The group's art director provided me with this piece of concept art as a visual prompt for the scene's setting.
From there I proceeded to create character designs for the two heroes. I was heavily inspired by design tropes I had come across in anime, such as the styling and colouring of hair, the shaping of their faces and eyes, as well as technical details such as line colour and weight, vivid colour palette, and shading style.
My aim was to keep the designs simple and workable while simultaneously distinct. To achieve this, I gave each character a set of simple yet unique physical features; for the boy, the bandaid on his cheek, and his protruding fang-like tooth. For the girl, the light freckling on her cheeks, and black choker around her neck. These features are also commonly seen in anime, contributing to the desired anime aesthetic. Finally, I gave them complimentary colour palettes, with the boy coloured primarily in warm red and pink tones, while the girl is made up of colder blues and lilacs.This was done in oder to create a sense of design synergy between them, to give the sense that they quite literally 'belong together'.
After getting these designs approved, the next stage was to create a rough storyboard laying out the action of the scene, pictured below.
I had just under two weeks to rough out, fully animate, and colour the clip. Linked below is the visualiser in its final form.
Following the visualiser for 'Here,' I was asked to create two more similar projects for the group's upcoming releases, 'Drive' and 'Never Surrender'. The longest of the three clips, 'Drive' is linked below. From the shots I provided, the video was edited cut together by the group's art director.
As with 'Here', I was given prompts about setting and story beats before going on to create a storyboard outlining the action, pictured below. For 'Drive' I had around 2 weeks to complete the full animation.
'Never Surrender' was the final clip I created for the group. Due to the very short turnaround of this clip, I had to forgo the process of creating a storyboard, instead animating directly from the story prompts given to me by the art director.