The Art of

VILLAINY
By Alex Zepherin - Pinnock

T h e Brief
The making of the Abstract villain was an experience which has lead myself to gain a great understanding of what it is to be Abstract whilst using time based media. The following Art of documents 12 week process of creating an Abstract animation to an musical instrument using various softwares and ideas

The Mad Villain

Going down the route of creating a design lead project using music I had had a choice of using various instrumental that I believed appealed to me most.

I landed on the instrumental All Caps by Hip Hop Artists Madlib and MF Doom who combined are called Mad Villain.
I chose they're instrumental as the original song is a great listen and cleverly composed It varied and tempo, had a catchy beat which I thought gave a lot to work with.

The Single cover to All Caps

Madlib and MF Doom

T he influences
The first step was understanding what the music was. The All Caps instrumental is made out of samples, composed in a manor to make it contemporary and modern Sampling from 1967 Television Crime drama Ironside (see fig 1), and also from 1970s RnB group Freedom_____.

From there I decided to down the route of sampling 70s, such as the colours and mood of Ironsides Opening credits to 1970s Bruce Lee movies such as the Big Boss Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury I also referenced Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill for bold colours and camera movements as this film samples a lot from 1970s martial Arts

T h e Primary research
I began the design process of getting people to draw what they hear, to react to the music in hopes of finding a way into the project

These drawings were the most helpful because it presented an array of information on the tempos and the transitions between the instrumental

T he Initial ideas
My reaction to the music.

T he Experiments
Sketching with Maya

The Dissection of the Beat

After drawing up quick concepts I started to concentrate more of the music and split the instrumental up into the strongest instruments, and tried to interpret them onto paper, then Maya

T h e Heart beat
The Drum set I always saw it as a heart beat, so I began trying to visual what that heart would be like and how it would pump.

I then came across the Beijing animation trailer of the Olympics which was designed by Jamie Hewitt and admired the shot of the monkey breaking free of the rocks he was encaged in.

I thought this visual was perfect for the heart, as it could be a pumping so heard its breaking out of its form .

T he Cracks
The hardest to visualise. I gained inspiration by the Gorillaz again with their music video Clint Eastwood. Creating the cracks was a trial and error process than to camera shot them was difficult as well.

The Particle Piano

T h e Blocks