I’m now well and truly stuck into the pop video now – it’s a low budget job which means I really need to get a lot of animation done in a short time – and I seem to be succeeding. The cartoony style looks good so far and I think the story is going to make sense. The only worry now is whether the project can be given the kind of stylistic look I’m after. I’ve gone for a mix of art deco and modern imagery and I’m hoping it will fit together… I’m also doing a few over-ambitious things (like cloth simulation and a bit of 3d lipsyncing – both of which are things you’d mostly try to avoid in a quick-turnaround cartoon style project).

The animation will be done (it’s rendering over the weekend), so what I’m worrying about (I always have to have something to worry about) is that indefinable uniqueness that you need to give a music promo its style. You can’t just do a cartoon or just do a video shoot or just do a dance routine – it has to have an unusual quirk – a Look that’s unmistakable and unique. And that’s the thing that’s most difficult to get on a low budget production because you’re so pushed for time you end up putting most of your effort into just getting the thing done.

What you really need is time to experiment and play around with the imagery to get something you’ve never seen before, and that’s what you don’t have a lot of the time.

In this case, the individual style is going to come from overlays and transitions I create in After Effects as well as colour correction… I’ve tried a few ideas, but I don’t think I’ve quite got there yet.


I’ve managed to get another 8 minutes of the documentary cleaned up – so I’m now about half way through the polishing stage before I send it to the client. After I get his response to it, I’m sure I’ll have to go back and re-cut to some extent – then there’s sound and colour correction to do – so it’s not finished.

Google adwords
I’ve also found a bit of time to mess about with my google ad-words adverts – and I’ve more or less doubled my click through rate (the number of people who click on my ad having seen it) from 1% to 2% just by re-wording the ad.

The trouble is, more clicks don’t necessarily mean anything except my advertising budget gets used up faster