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Moby Drops Moving ‘My Only Love’ Music Video Depicting Amazon’s Heartbreaking Destruction

Celebrated musician teams with Brazilian studio Zombie on beautifully designed CG animated video chronicling rampant Amazon deforestation.

Celebrated musician Moby has just released a stunning, highly emotional new animated music video of his latest single, “My Only Love,” from his recently released album, All Visible Objects. Produced by Brazilian animation studio Zombie through BlinkInk in London, the CG animated short chronicles the heartbreaking separation of a jaguar and her cub in the face of rampant deforestation of the Amazon at the hands of the meat and dairy industry.  From the unusual and compelling character and forest designs to the fiery orange hued color palette, the video vividly captures the musician’s emotional message about the plight of the Amazon forest, and all that lives within it.

According to Moby, “It seems as if we’re confronted with new catastrophes on an almost daily basis, but while we deal with these horrors the climate emergency just gets worse and worse. And without the rainforests our planet will quickly become a scorching, uninhabitable wasteland. The goal of this video was to remind people of the ongoing horrors of climate emergency and deforestation, as well as reminding people that 90% of rainforest deforestation is a result of meat and dairy production.”

Moby has also announced a live Twitch event taking place on August 5 at 1:00 pm PST, where he will join the video’s animators and other guests to discuss the realities of deforestation and animal agriculture.

Led by Zombie director Paulo Garcia, “My Only Love” took a team of 90 artists 14 weeks to produce, from initial script to final delivery. Zombie’s production pipeline included Photoshop, Maya, Arnold, Zbrush, and Nuke.

Garcia shares that “Moby fought a lot to have monkeys as main characters instead of the jaguars,” but in the end, he agreed with the director’s vision that “even jaguars, with their power, cannot fight against humans.” “Another poetic thing that we brought to the script was that all living creatures of the forest, like animals and Indians, would be made of wood,” he continues. “The idea was to have this natural feeling that they belong and live in harmony with the forest. The other humans, those were deformed and covered in metal; ‘civilization’ made then harsh and without remorse. To represent all this, we used CGI, but tried to bring a stop-frame look for the film, so all the environment, characters, and animation were made on a small scale, to be more close to the reference.”

“Our biggest challenges were to create VFX solutions for fire, smoke, and particles, avoiding heavy simulations and preserving an aesthetic that matches with the film’s art direction,” the director adds.

Reflecting on the video’s creation, Garcia, notes, “To work with someone who I’ve always admired is an incredible opportunity in itself. Moby was the easiest client ever. He was a really good partner during production. It’s made even better when the task he gives is to send a message to the world about the deforestation problem growing fast in my home country of Brazil. Lots of artists gave their best to make this music video happen. Beautiful music, strong visuals, amazing storytelling, its’s got everything we love most at Zombie.”

All profits from “All Visible Objects” are being donated to charity. Over the last 10 years, Moby has been donating 100% of the profits from most of his work to animal and human rights charities. His free film music site, mobygratis, his festival Circle V, his restaurant and his last few albums have all donated 100% of their profits to animal and human rights organizations. 

“My Only Love” Credits:

Production: Zombie Studio/BlinkInk
Animation and Visual Effects by: Zombie Studio
Directed by: Paulo Garcia
Executive Creative direction: Daniel Salles
Executive Producer: Josef Byrne (BlinkInk) / Natália Gouvea (Zombie)
Account Services: Stefanie Dias
Original Script: Paulo Garcia
Script Adaptation: Natalia Mamede
Animation Producer: André Carvalho
CGI Lead: Wallan Oliveira, Claudio Junior, Rafael Segnini
Technical Director: Wallan Oliveira
Technical Supervisor: Isaac Buzzola
Storyboard and Animatic: Saulo Brito and Gabriel São Marcos
Animation Director: Patrick Botton
Lead Modeller: Mauricio Sampaio
Lead Look Development: Claudio Junior
Lead Composition: Leandro Amorim, Isaac Buzzola
Concept Art: Estevão Teuber, Anna Caiado, Feppa Rodrigues.
Live action director: André Lefcadito (Estilingue Films)
Color Grading: Marcio Pasqualino (Psycho n' Look)

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Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.