Music Video: Equateur - Cheval Noir

Kadavre Exquis produced this gorgeous music video for Equateur. I talked to François Grumelin-Sohn about this production. Both Cheval Noir and The Lava (a previous song, see below) were staff-picked by Vimeo.

But before I continue, first enjoy the video:

François writes:

This project all along took over two years from the first time I heard their song The Lava (see this video below), back in 2013, then, we worked on the first episode, knowing there would be some more, originally we should have covered all the EP songs, but it was too ambitious for one and only one person working on it, but I was ok with the idea that two music video would be enough to create and instore a nice mood over their EP and the films.

As for technique, it all starts from scratch, from doodles on paper to a clearer thing redrawn on tablet, then animatic, this video shows a bit of the evolution of the edit over time, music changed a bit as well.

The animatic is a very weird mix of draft & playblasts & lame animations, you know.

As for the Blender part, a lot of the architectural backgrounds & backgrounds in general are Blender models. I use a weird process since Blender is my quick advanced sketchbook for finding the cinematography.

I am so not a 3d hero, so I use 3d in order to extract a 2d files and use the parallax in after effects. So I divide my scene into layers that are exported on alpha background, import in photoshop, and then, it is time for painting.

Then it is a mix between 2d layers, some are static paintings, and some are 2d png seq of a 3d animation as by example the rocks and particles, on even, the rollin ground effects here:

As for the classic parallax effect :

Some of the shots, are just 3d, like those :

But I wanted them in minority since it is supposed to be a 2d-like animation. The horse has also been mounted in 3d for some special shots and hand textured with UV MAP,

And also one in 2d for the profile run & profile walk :

Here is a nice glitch of it :

As for recap about Blender, I owe to Blender a lot, to its community, forums, people, it bought me so much time in the learning process, I don't think it could have been so easy with another 3d software.

Thanks François!

See François' previous video, the Lava, below:

Equateur // The Lava // Part I