So this is what music looks like..
Without breaking into a modified chorus of Wet Wet Wet, you might never realise just how much animation is all around you.
And its pretty powerful stuff – I’m an audio guy so I won’t claim to offer any revolutionary insights into the art of animation – but i do know it can educate, make us laugh,cry, cause massive uproar (flick down a few pages to the interesting stuff!), tell a story or just entertain for a few minutes of the day….and it even makes pretty rubbish songs bearable. All these things combine to make some fairly memorable moments in music video history.
Apart from in cartoons, it turns out I’ve been looking at animation all my life, but I never really noticed it.
The last 10 years or so has seen a real boost in animated videos as the technology is now widely available for a fraction of what it used to cost. The fact that you can create the darkest of imagery or the most futuristic of visions and anywhere funny in between means that the medium is hugely flexible. Be it stop-motion, claymation or CGI, there’s a variety of methods directors can choose from to make their video stand out.
Don’t ask me why I like some of these videos, what makes something ‘great’ is purely subjective. If there’s any test to see if its a good video try turning the sound off and just watching the video – if your still interested by the end then I guess it has something going for it!
Of course with any ‘best of” list, you can’t mention everyone so a few honourable mentions go to Dire Straits (pretty high tech for the time in an Atari graphics kind of way), Housemartins, Wolf Parade, Static-X (real, dream-like, nightmare-like…) Blur (the heart-breaking death of the strawberry milk!), Tears for Fears (the kaleidoscopic graphics), Mark Ronson ft Lilly Allen (I prefer Jessica Rabbit i must say…) and U2, who despite what you might think of their latest album, have a pretty interesting look to the video for their last single . Lastly, Gorillaz gets the thumbs up but since they’re an animated band, you can’t really pick just one….
While offering a scary glimpse into what my CD collection consists of, take a few minutes and see how things have come on over the last 30 years…..
One thing to note, Crazy Frog in no way counts cause its an atrocious waste of anyone’s time…..remember how I said animation is pretty powerful stuff, I think this says it all……
Enjoy! And feel free to comment with any notable omissions…
19 comments so far
What about…
http://www.vimeo.com/4060416
Oasis, the Masterplan??? Are we allow to nominate our own work
9 October 2009
10:59 am
What, after being on the radio TWICE this week, you want more publicity??!!
Well i figured that i’d already linked to 2 of our fantastic creations and a third was pushing it, probably should have mentioned it mind you…my fault… I guess they’ll be no more work from the Oasis lads now anyway…
9 October 2009
11:49 am
No love for Aha’s ‘Take On Me’? A travesty!
I can only find the literal version:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e062d7b4d5/take-on-me-literal-video-version-from-dustfilms
9 October 2009
2:44 pm
A-ha – Ahh noo….good video alright but it never really caught my imagination – having said that it was probably the first use of rotoscoping in a music video?? Maybe just maybe I left out a pioneering music video…I do prefer the brass in this version though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO7sTntruzg
9 October 2009
3:04 pm
As a kid it seemed totally revolutionary to me – can’t think of any other vids that used rotoscoping beforehand. Of course I didn’t know what rotoscoping was, just thought it looked magic!
That other version u posted doesn’t feature Morten Harket’s cheekbones! (childhood idols die hard
)
9 October 2009
3:23 pm
Anyone see the literal version of ‘Take on me’….Hilarious!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnjYrP5J6rE
12 October 2009
8:12 am
Without letting A-ha take over the blog, I do remember seeing this awhile back
http://www.funnyfamilyguy.com/videos/Family_Guy_Videos/Chris_Griffin_Take_On_Me
13 October 2009
9:33 am
Love it!
13 October 2009
9:36 am
Hi Dominic,
The following is not going to be up there with the best,but I did get to work on it supervising the Animation here in Korea,and it has some interesting stories behind it ,here is one of them,
[well it is if you have ever done inbetweens and watch the video!
We did about 2 minutes and about 40 seconds made it to the video,the sausage monster took ages to inbetween ,originally there as a sausage colour and a shadow,then when they saw it on colour,,they added another colour,so there were 3 colours on each sausage,
look at the bloody sausages there’s thousands of them!
here is the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7_0ABvpiSI&feature=related
15 October 2009
3:08 pm
Denis, I see what you mean – ouch! Think this goes under the “makes pretty rubbish songs bearable” pile
All of Limp Bizkit’s videos do seem to contain half-naked women and sausages now that i think of it
15 October 2009
3:46 pm
radiohead – paranoid android
another great one
30 October 2009
3:05 pm
Err, oh crap, yeh better add that one too….Top 10’s never stop at 10!
30 October 2009
3:15 pm
I just have to nominate my own video … no really, its good cos it brings together 15 different animations!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuRbw-lIqI
leano
8 February 2010
12:45 pm
There’s two I feel should be mentioned. One is the Flobots Handlebars from a couple years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLUX0y4EptA
and the other is a video we just finished making for Ohio USA artist Elijah Black
http://vimeo.com/9559516
21 February 2010
7:17 pm
You might like:
Sick of Sarah’s “Paint Like That”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKOeTio49Zg
10 May 2010
7:22 pm
Great to see links to other peoples music videos. Good job the Leano putting so many people together to put a video together – not an easy thing to do. Nice job Jodi as well on a very cool video!
Here’s another cool video by Eoghan Kidney for Fight like Apes:
http://www.vimeo.com/2966126
21 May 2010
8:37 am
good call on shynolas junior senior, they pretty much set the standard for animated music videos.
monkmus for kid koala has some lovely touches that sync really well with the music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR-i0qRHLpM&feature=related
beck epro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrG6xBW5Wk
paul del9
24 May 2010
1:24 pm
Sorry for not checking back in awhile – I see I’ve missed some great additions – the Kid Koala one is very cool indeed. Thanks all for checking by!
On a side note, now that MTV is actually all about absurd US lifestyles, youtube seems to be the new ‘music television’ and the record companies know it! $$$$$$….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/jan/20/emi-blocks-ok-go-youtube
24 May 2010
4:05 pm
Great videos, however you should check out this stop animation video made for The Orange Strips by Tobias Stretch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_O4C7njAKw
14 July 2010
5:20 pm