Story concept by J. Hutton
Directed, produced and animated by Connor Scheffler
Reference footage shot by J. Hutton
Sony Music Entertainment (on behalf of Same Plate)
J wanted to create an animated video that was soulful, sexy and somewhat comedic in a way that approaches romance like a psychedelic love trip. We decided on a frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation. Our initial discussion began with his thoughts & ideas in which I took and created a front to back storyboard for the entire video.
Many of the “paradise world” scenes, and some of the living room scenes were rendered out in 3D and animated to help provide realism and atmosphere to the final scene. This is the horse that J and his love interest are riding in the video, except in the reference footage, they’re actually riding the back of their couch.
Reference footage was created by J to streamline the frame-by-frame drawing process as much as possible. This also made everything feel real, in terms of motion, perspective and likeness, without it actually being real.
In total, the entire video took about 4 months to complete, with a rough total of 4000 frames hand drawn, completely from scratch. Here I am using my drawing tablet in Photoshop.