Irina Dakeva is a French artist whom I discovered after watching the music video for Breakbot's "Baby I'm Yours". The video is an animation of over 2000 hand painted water colors made by Dakeva. It was nominated for both "Best budget pop/dance/urban video" and "Best animation in a video" in 2010 at the UK Music Video Awards.
Dakeva said that she wanted to make something lively to combat what she saw as the cold and rigid nature of most digital productions. She thought that it was very important to not lose the feeling that these were real, hand painted images in the animation process.
Dakeva first painted images of the band performing, which she filmed in a studio, and then had to create her own transitional sequence for the video which she said was was very difficult to conceive but ended up being the most enjoyable part. After the video was released she put the individual watercolors up for viewing in an exhibition at Colette's Waterbar.
Upon first watching the video, I was immediately hypnotized by the artwork and the anthropomorphic characters. I had no idea that the images were created by hand and it makes me even more impressed by its seamless sequencing. I agree with Dakeva that this has an intrinsically different feel to it than most modern animations. I sincerely hope to see more of her work soon.
This is super cool! I love how Dakeva has really flawlessly integrated digital and traditional art mediums; you can't tell where the watercolor ends and the digital manipulation begins. Her works also fits very nicely with the song and gets the ideas behind the lyrics across well without being super obvious. What a neat video!
ReplyDeleteIf Dakeva wanted to make "something lively to combat what she saw as the cold and rigid nature of most digital productions", I think she was incredibly successful. The transitions between images flow effortlessly, matching with the constant change in audio. Also, I am in awe at the number of water colors necessary in producing this video. Talk about a serious time commitment.
ReplyDeleteI love this! The colors and animations of the paintings all have this sense of unity, creating this amazing music video that goes well with the music. I actually just downloaded that song after watching it because Dakeva's artwork really captured my attention and helped promote the song.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually the coolest thing ever (love the song too)! I agree with Elaine about the flawless integration of both digital and traditional art mediums. The 2 were practically seamless! I can only imagine the amount of time and effort it must have taken Dakeva to create the whole music video. That kind of dedication to her craft can only be applauded and commended. Although I was mesmerized by the video in its entirety, I really enjoyed the transitions to one object/person to another completely different object/person throughout the video. Her attention to color and detail make me wish she made posters as well! I'd have them all over!
ReplyDeleteThe combination of the song and the video are amazing! The animation flows really well and the artwork is fantastic. The watercolors of the band members and instruments seem so real and use so many different colors that combine to be extremely appealing. Overall, I think the video is extremely creative and I cannot imagine how much time it took to create.
ReplyDeletesomething about this video is very familiar. I'm not entirely sure what it is but Dakeva uses a style in this video that is reminiscent of some old short films that were able to make hand drawings really come to life on screen. This is one of my favorite ways for animations to be produced and the watercolors really only make it more exceptional. There are many artists/producers/directors that use mostly 3d generated images in videos so a return to hand drawn images is refreshing.
ReplyDeleteI think this video is a really amazing example of temporal color mixing! The individual frames are beautiful by themselves but when played quickly like this they meld into more uniform forms/characters.
ReplyDeleteDakeva's attempt to create expressive animation hit the nail on the head as shown in this video. When I pause the video twice a fraction of a second apart, I can see that each watercolor image's main hue contrasts to the preceding watercolor, which adds that sense of liveliness to the music video. It's especially amazing knowing that Dakeva had to synchronize each shift in animation with notable shifts in the song.
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