Chomet, Hype Williams Rotoscope Heartless
Editorial and post-production house, Chomet, in conjunction with Hype Williams and visual effects company Optic Flavor, teamed up to create the new Kanye West music video "Heartless." Produced and directed by Hype Williams for Def Jam Records, "Heartless" made its debut with the release of the new album, 808S AND HEARTBREAK at year's end. Footage from the new video was shown during the Kanye West performance on the AMA Awards in advance of the album release date.
The video for "Heartless" was conceived as an homage to "American Pop," an animated cult-fave film by Ralph Bakshi. The concept, as developed by Hype Williams and Kanye West, features West singing in a series of highly-stylized locations such as: a Miami street scene, a space-age looking Times Square, and a modern apartment. The singing scenes are inter-cut with background dancers.
Chomet and Optic Flavor were brought into the project for their visual style and technical expertise. Hype Williams shot the Kanye West footage before the addition of visual effects. This cell animation style required extensive rotoscoping and hand-drawn backgrounds.
"Hype came to us with an almost impossible challenge: after picture-lock we had 10 days to deliver the goods. It was a daunting task, with over 3,000 frames of hand-drawn animation and backgrounds, but with the help of a very talented team we were able to pull it off in a record of 10 days working around the clock," explained Michael Chomet.
"Kanye and I wanted to do something for this video that was unexpected. We came-up with the concept for music video and needed a visual effects team that would deliver in terms of style, quality, and timing. I've worked with Stephan and Michael before and knew that we could depend on them to pull it off," added Hype Williams.
Because of the complexity of the project and the huge workload involved, Chomet and Optic Flavor had to assemble an international team of more than 65 people working around the globe -- in Romania, Hong Kong and the United States.
Chomet and Hype Williams have collaborated on past music projects for artists like Common, Jamie Foxx, and N.E.R.D. Chomet and Optic Flavor were responsible for all post-production and visual effects for the "Heartless" video with Stephan Zlotescu acting as Art Director/VFX Supervisor and Vlad Caprini as Project Coordinator.
The video for "Heartless" was conceived as an homage to "American Pop," an animated cult-fave film by Ralph Bakshi. The concept, as developed by Hype Williams and Kanye West, features West singing in a series of highly-stylized locations such as: a Miami street scene, a space-age looking Times Square, and a modern apartment. The singing scenes are inter-cut with background dancers.
Chomet and Optic Flavor were brought into the project for their visual style and technical expertise. Hype Williams shot the Kanye West footage before the addition of visual effects. This cell animation style required extensive rotoscoping and hand-drawn backgrounds.
"Hype came to us with an almost impossible challenge: after picture-lock we had 10 days to deliver the goods. It was a daunting task, with over 3,000 frames of hand-drawn animation and backgrounds, but with the help of a very talented team we were able to pull it off in a record of 10 days working around the clock," explained Michael Chomet.
"Kanye and I wanted to do something for this video that was unexpected. We came-up with the concept for music video and needed a visual effects team that would deliver in terms of style, quality, and timing. I've worked with Stephan and Michael before and knew that we could depend on them to pull it off," added Hype Williams.
Because of the complexity of the project and the huge workload involved, Chomet and Optic Flavor had to assemble an international team of more than 65 people working around the globe -- in Romania, Hong Kong and the United States.
Chomet and Hype Williams have collaborated on past music projects for artists like Common, Jamie Foxx, and N.E.R.D. Chomet and Optic Flavor were responsible for all post-production and visual effects for the "Heartless" video with Stephan Zlotescu acting as Art Director/VFX Supervisor and Vlad Caprini as Project Coordinator.
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