Sloper: The Thin Line
So fly on out of here my friend
For the release of the new single from Sloper, Suburban records asked us to visualize the story of 'The Thin Line' in an animated video clip.
Agency
Client
At the rainbows end
Sloper is a classic rock band that originated from the collaboration between Golden Earring drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk, Triggerfinger drummer Mario Goossens and lead singer Peter Shoulder and guitarist Fabio Canini.
Because the band members come from the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK, they have recorded their contribution for the new single 'The Thin Line' at home due to the pandemic. For the same reason, they also couldn't get together to record the music video for the clip.
Some early concepts when we considered using an Airstream RV as the vehicle
The initial storyboard, The RV got changed to a Chevy convertable
Lets rock!
We were asked by record label Suburban Records to visualize the story of 'The Thin Line' in an animated video clip, in which the storytelling and animation are just as central as the music. The whole story around the clip was created in collaboration between us and Sloper.
Listen here to an interview (in Dutch) about our collaboration with drummer Mario Goossens (Triggerfinger/Sloper) on KINK with DJ Jasper Leijdens.
By using psychedelic colors and of course the classic Chevy convertible, we tried to capture the atmospheric sound of The Thin Line, with a nod to classic rock music and the carefree seventies.
It all comes together
The song and clip are about looking back on a precious friendship of a deceased friend and the thin line between life and death, as even death cannot break such a good friendship. The universe symbolizes the place where memories come to life and you can be reunited with your loved ones.
We wanted to create an unique style for this clip by using the dynamic qualities of 3D animation in combination with the dreamy abstraction of painted brush strokes.
In order to realize this, we made a different paintover for each scene background and blended it with the original 3D layer.
The teaser for the Big Boy Bag
Example of how we combined the 3D scene with 2D elements
One of the few scenes that was mostly put together with 2D layers
Happy little clouds
For moving parts such as the red and blue friend, the car and other passing elements, we used AI that allowed us to apply the painterly look to the moving parts of the 3D animation. This worked especially well with the clouds as these had to transform into different shapes with each scene.
In the end, everything was put together and provided with more painted effects such as extra lines in the backgrounds to depict movement and other 2D layer effects.
