Art Direction,
Motion Graphics,
& Compositing

XLVI


Les Sins — Why




A tongue-in-cheek, glitched-out dance video for Les Sins' "Why" that features many of the trappings of modern VFX-heavy video production without using any of them properly.

Nate was shot dancing around in the streets of Oakland and on BART, and Chaz was shot against a green backdrop in a homemade motion capture suit. In post, the footage was haphazardly luma keyed and laid over technicolor gradient animations, but Chaz's green screen footage was left untouched.

A digital version of Chaz was built in Cinema 4D and roughly rigged, and then paired with some messy motion capture data captured from a Windows Kinect device. All of the rig's animation handles, the mo-cap data points, the scene's lights, and the world grid were left visible for final playblast exports to really accentuate a sloppy, digital look. The footage was then distorted and corrupted for an extra layer of digital mess.




CREDITS:
Video: Ben Smith (XLVI)
Starring: Nate Salman, Chaz Bundick
Shot by: Matt Renoir
Thanks to: Josh Terris & Massis Shahmirian

PRESS:
Complex
Stereogum
Thump

Ben Smith


Digital Artist