Directed by TOBi & Jacob Carlson
Animation by Connor Scheffler
Sony Music Entertainment (on behalf of Same Plate); Kobalt Music Publishing
Growth is am incredibly powerful song about TOBi’s personal introspection and exploration through his years growing up in Nigeria, to North America. It’s a song about coming out of the struggles of the past by transmuting the pain and the hurt in to self love and, in TOBi’s own words, “shedding old skin and coming into a new frame that is bigger and better.”
After isolation, the charcoal drawing was imported in to the project and manually programmed to “draw itself out” using keyframes.
The art style explored in this video is highly reflective of neo-expressionist, contemporary and African art. Everything was hand drawn on paper using charcoal and pencil, and then later scanned to the computer for isolation.
I wanted the drawings to all have an extremely raw, human aspect to them to embody the theme of the song. To me, it made the lines look full of emotion and thought, so I drew everything with my non-dominant left hand.