Announcing an animated video project with OK Go!

Well, the title says it all. A few months ago, Blender Studio was approached by artists Will Anderson and Lucas Zanotto. Alongside the rock band OK Go, known for their spectacular music videos, they were looking for a video production partner.

The initial plan was to create a unique, animated "lyrics" video for the song Impulse Purchase. That idea soon evolved into something more ambitious: a dynamic, generative animation video, featuring the fun and quirky animation that Will is known for, combined with Lucas' iconic design language.

Artwork courtesy of Lucas Zanotto

Artwork courtesy of Will Anderson

We had already been discussing possible collaborations with Will earlier this year, inspired by his digital puppet animations, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with him and Lucas on such a fun project. So we decided to move forward, and have spent the past couple of months developing it together, alongside our ongoing Blender Studio productions. This is all produced and distributed in a truly independent way.

Interactive Fun

What’s special about this project, and why is it worth sharing? This will be an open project, just like every other work produced by Blender Studio, with the only exception that the music copyright remains with the band. The production file will be available for download, along with the documentation and tools needed to use it. So far, so good.

The interesting part? The entire video actually takes place in a single .blend file! This file contains a real-time interactive setup that animates and plays in sync with the music track, and can be controlled via an external app using OSC.

Work in progress

The goal of the project is to share both the file and the knowledge of how it was made, so you can not only have fun with the main character from the video, but also learn how to create similar interactive setups for your own animations.

Coming soon!

In the coming days we will be setting up the project on the Blender Studio website, and start sharing the process and the building blocks developed to create this video. We already have a premiere date for the video release, which is in early September. Dates coming soon!

About the team

This project is realized by a very small independent external team, with production and technical support from the Blender Studio team. This is similar to projects like "Hero".

Will Anderson is a BAFTA-winning filmmaker and animator from Scotland. Edinburgh based, he writes, directs & produces lots of character driven, dialogue-led animated work for film, tv, theatre & online. With character at the heart of it, spanning 2D to 3D design, process drives his stories, which lean on existential themes. Check out his Blender Conference 2024 talk on Innovation in Character Creation.

Lucas Zanotto is an Italian designer and artist celebrated for his joyful and imaginative creations. Based in Helsinki, he blends his product design roots with playful artistry to craft animations and installations that captivate audiences worldwide. His work inspires wonder and delight, connecting with viewers of all ages.

Since their inception, OK Go has been something more than a band and something different from an art project. With a career that includes award-winning videos, New York Times op-eds, collaborations with pioneering dance companies, tech giants, NASA, animators and Muppets, and an experiment that encoded their music on actual strands of DNA, OK Go continues to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved. Formed as a quartet in Chicago in 1998 and relocated to Los Angeles three years later, OK Go (Damian Kulash, Timothy Nordwind, Dan Konopka, Andy Ross) have spent their career in a steady state of transformation and continue to add to a curriculum vitae filled with experimentation in a variety of mediums. OK Go's work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, and their achievements have been recognized with twenty-one Cannes Lions, twelve CLIOs, three VMAs, two Webbys, The Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and a Grammy.

OK Go

The project is produced by Francesco Siddi (Blender Studio) and Damian Kulash (OK Go).