They Might Be Giants get animated via LAIKA. Courtesy of LAIKA.

When the arts converge, it can be a beautiful thing. And when animation merges with music videos, it can become something fun — and exceptional.

Animation house LAIKA teamed up with They Might Be Giants to create the band’s music video, Bastard Wants to Hit Me. “The motivation was pretty simple,” says LAIKA/House animation director, Aaron Sorenson. “The idea was to have a fun down-time project that could promote 2D animation at LAIKA and ride on the popularity of They Might be Giants.”

The motivation may have been simple, but the resulting video earned both an Annie Award nomination for “Best Animated Television Commercial,” the Judges’ Award at The Northwest Film & Video Festival in Portland, Oregon (October 2005), and a competition spot at the Annecy International Film Festival.

“Being nominated for competition by a prestigious international film festival such as Annecy is always an honor. The fact that we are the sole U.S. representative makes this distinction extraordinary,” says Lourri Hammack, president/exec producer of LAIKA’s House division.

Sorenson says that he started the animation process with a storyline and characters inspired by the They Might Be Giants song and from his personal experiences. He created animation that follows the tale of a violent misunderstanding that begins in a parking lot between two strangers.

An unusual image is seen in the first glimpse of the mullet-sporting protagonist — the “bastard” — who is working out when he spots the main character. “I was walking by a park one day and I saw a guy working out with a log as if it were weights. The scene stuck with me,” Sorenson says. The music video story continues as “some crazy bastard” thinks he recognizes the main character and waves to him. An intense chase follows, ending with a fist to the main character’s face.

“The video was a combination of traditional hand-drawn animation and After Effects,” explains Sorenson. “Ink and paint was done in US Animation then exported to After Effects for final composite and camera. It took about six months to complete, even though it was short (2:00) because it was a down-time project and we were all working on commercials at the same time.”

Despite squeezing in the work on the video, Sorenson is pleased with the experience, the results, and the band’s approval. “Music videos are a wide-open medium. We had a lot of freedom,” says Sorenson, adding, “They Might Be Giants [John Linnell and John Flansburgh] liked everything we brought to them.”

Original U2
The TMBG offering from LAIKA is not the only music video attracting award nods. Spontaneous, and its sister post-production company Bluerock, have been nominated for MTV Video Music Awards for their work on U2’s breakthrough Original of the Species music video.

The Original of the Species video was nominated in the categories of Best Special Effects and Best Editing. The video blends 3D animation with 16 mm film footage to deliver a haunting and evocative visual story. Original of the Species has an ethereal, otherworldly look that resulted from the combination of live-action photography, photoreal computer animation, motion-capture technology and design.

The music video utilized Softimage’s character animation technology called Face Robot. SFX artists created digital images of U2 band member Bono and a computer-generated woman, who in real life is a friend of the lead singer. The image of the woman was first generated by Spontaneous artists for use as background imagery for the band’s Vertigo tour, which took place in 2005. Animation World Network examined the making of the Original of the Species video in the VFXWorld story, “Technology Serving the Idea.”

“This nomination is the culmination of an exciting year of working with U2 during their Vertigo tour,” says Spontaneous creative director John Leamy. “The band is so open-minded and responsive to creative input that, despite all the hard work, it’s been a series of dream assignments.”

“In fact, after we finished the Original of the Species video, Bono was kind enough to give Spontaneous a shout-out at their most recent Madison Square Garden concert, with all of our crew in attendance,” Leamy says.

The VMAs will be announced at an awards ceremony in New York on Aug. 31, 2006.