Andrew Khosravani and Maliboo animate Moon Panda’s atmospheric music video

For Moon Panda’s enigmatic and atmospheric new music video, Barcelona-based animators Andrew Khosravani and David Borrull (the latter also known as Maliboo) have created an animation that’s equally mystical and wondrous. Following the story of an underwater submarine exploration, That Girl, which is out today (22 November) crosses alien landscapes and gigantic whales in a slow-paced and meditative piece. The animators have created something out of a fever dream. As the submarine loses its signal deep underwater, the colourful landscape turns stranger and stranger, as the animators use the imagery of gems, abandoned statue heads and Greek architecture to create this nautically cosmic setting.

These are similar themes to the previous music video that Andrew, who has now joined the full-time roster of directors at Partizan, made for Moon Panda, Rabbit, which featured similar imagery of gems, disembodied statue heads and even the same species of fish returning. However, this time, it feels more expansive, more mysterious even. “I initially said no to the video just because I think I actually was a bit scared of the running time and coming up with an idea that could fit in and still feel fresh,” Andrew tells It’s Nice That.

“I approached Maliboo, an absolutely top animator from Barcelona, to see if he would be interested in a collaborative project and he agreed, in a moment of madness I can only imagine,” he continues. What resulted was a 5-week collaborative project made in the summer heat in Barcelona, helped by the fact that Andrew moved to a studio two floors below David.

“The brief we received was really open. Maddy [of Moon Panda] mentioned an underwater theme and sent me a video of a turtle. David came up with the concept of the journey of the submarine and did an incredible job on the animation,” Andrew explains. “What we really wanted to achieve with the artwork was a sense of depth, wonder and magic. We knew we couldn’t focus on cel animation as it was not feasible so we decided to focus on creating really expansive worlds mixing collage and illustration.”

As flowers unfold, vines over-growing the underwater architecture and glowing white spirits dance around the submarine, this is the ideal visualisation of the reverb-heavy track from the Demark-based band. “For me, it’s always about the process more than the end result. Animation has this beautiful quality that involves a considerable amount of work for little time of exposure,” David says, adding that it is this process of planning out timings, storyboarding and creating the first few keyframes that is what he loves most about animation.

“I love working on really cool creative projects but I also like eating and having a roof over my head so sometimes that means compromising,” Andrew says on the projects he chooses. “I know some people really struggle with that compromise and I respect their creative passion but I personally don’t mind doing the nitty gritty stuff too,” he adds.

Much to our benefit, this doesn’t seem to be the final collaboration between the two. “I would love to work on another project with Maliboo too, so hopefully something will come up. He was threatening me with a ten-minute animation he has somewhere,” Andrew jokes. “I think we learn a lot from one another so hopefully we’ll continue to collaborate,” David adds, returning the sentiment. If this proposed animation is as captivating as That Girl is, we’ll be glad to watch all ten minutes of it.