I_O & Lights - Annihilation

Role - Director, Illustrator, Animator

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For this video, I was contacted by Mau5trap, an electronic music label based in Canada. The project was to direct and animate a short, minute long animation to “Annihilation” by I_O and Lights. The song is a deep, melodic dance track with Lights providing angelic vocals throughout.

I_O’s management gave me a brief description of the world he was trying to build with Lights, a post-apocalyptic planet where two characters wander and survive. They wanted a darker, comic book style with a high contrast and low color. I took their brief, and created black and white landscapes littered with rubble and broken down machines. The plot follows two characters, based on each musician, scavenging in a wasteland destroyed by technological collapse. The characters travel separate from each other, alone as their journeys bring them closer and closer towards a distant city. Eventually they reach it, and in a moment of synchronization unknown to the scavengers, the two stumble upon machines that stand undamaged. Activating their respective technology both characters are sucked in, morphing into liquid that forms together into a single portal. Eventually both are released, waking up in a lush mountaintop just feet away from each other. The last oasis in a dead world.

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