Mind-blowing motion design with molten gold, crystallising rock and spinning wood

It’s high time we introduced the work of Tavo, a Madrid-based studio working for a broad range of agencies which specialises in digital and motion. But by specialise, we don’t mean that it can knock together a collage by editing a bunch of ready-made footage into one full-length clip, oh no. Rather, it responds to complex briefs with elaborate and aesthetically challenging concepts which it then proceeds to execute to higher standards than we might even have imagined possible.

Here’s one project it worked on, for example: last year it created the opening videos for a three-day festival in Miami, held by the Art Directors Club to celebrate its eponymous awards. As Tavo’s site explains, each day of events at the conference showed a different element of art direction, so the studio came up with an approach which would mirror this three-pronged approach over the course of the three days, using marble, rock and wood respectively.

The clips it created show liquid gold pouring seductively from inside a marble diamond, a hunk of rock rapidly crystallising to create a large cluster of gems which spontaneously crumbles and splinters, and a chunk of wood which twists to reveal purple vinyl-like discs spinning inside it. If all of this sounds like something from an acid-influenced 70s video then you’re not far wrong, but you can’t deny that it’s very impressive work.