To capture the song’s beat and energy, artist Lauren Brems drew fast scribbles over video frames of her friends dancing, integrated with subtle word movement, in her 2D animation short for Universal Music Group’s °1824 division.
AWN is pleased to share Boom Bam, the third in a series of innovative, animated music videos produced through Universal Music Group’s °1824 division, showcasing the work of talented young artists that helped the company’s record labels create engaging shorts, using all manner of digital tools, during the pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, many °1824 team members were more focused on videography than animation and motion graphics. However, with time on their hands during quarantine, they’ve taught themselves new skillsets to pivot into new areas of digital creativity. Fueled by instructional YouTube videos of Adobe After Effects, and tips from colleagues with animation experience, the team evolved to produce captivating music video content that you’ll see in this series.
Our latest short, Team Salut’s Boom Bam lyric video, is animated in 2D by artist Lauren Brems, who since its release, has been hired by 10K Projects as a creative consultant.
For Brems, look development began with the single’s cover art. “I liked how the design felt bold and inflated, sort of resembling art from the 80s, but with a different color palette,” she notes. “I wanted to play off this style and add my own personal flair for the lyric video. The song is also energetic and makes you want to dance, so I wanted to ensure there was movement throughout the whole piece. In addition to making the background constantly changing, I made all of the words subtly move, like they were hanging from a thread on a windy day. I think that while this was a small detail, it helped the video feel fluid and dynamic throughout.”
Take a look at her work:
According to the artist, her favorite parts of the video are the dancing figures sprinkled throughout. “I took videos of my friends dancing and imported them into Adobe After Effects. I then went in and did a super quick scribbly sketch of each frame. Since I’m just one person and I had roughly 250 individual frames to sketch, I made sure to stay out of the perfectionist mindset I often find myself stuck in. As hard as it was to not get caught up in the little details, I knew that the little imperfections and misplaced lines would make the piece genuine in the end.”
Reflecting on the project, Brems shares, “My personal philosophy is that if I have an idea for a new technique, but I’m not sure how it will look, the only way to find out is to try it. A lot of times when I try something new, it ends up looking awful; but at least half of the time when I find a new technique that I love, it helps me hone in on my personal style. Something that stuck out to me about Boom Bam was how Team Salut incorporated the sounds of drums in the lyrics, ‘boom, ka, bam.’ I thought this was really cool and almost abstract, so I tried to show that visually with my animations. I enjoyed being able to work with this artist and bring the sonic landscape to life.”
Built and run by Goodwin, the SVP of the Marketing, Content, and Experiences team, °1824 is powered by young artists and serves as UMG’s internal creative solutions team; 85 reps in 50 markets provide services including content creation, live events, experiential activations, college media outreach, A&R scouting, tour marketing, digital marketing, and campus and lifestyle visibility. This team has become UMG’s talent incubator for the music industry, placing more than 80 reps into full time positions (and 50 at UMG alone) since 2015.
All °1824 content creators are paid employees and members of the UMG team. They don’t outsource, and all their assets are created by teams of compensated employees. All content is produced for their labels/artists for °1824; individual creators are credited for their role in the content creation.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
