OK Go’s open-source music video is free for anyone to download and play with

OK Go’s music videos go without any introduction – they are synonymous with even the earliest memes and viral videos. They’re practically baked into internet culture, part of that first wave of bands to make it big on YouTube with a perfect mix between geekdom, rock music, and highly conceptual music videos. Their music video for WTF? made use of a repeating echo effect, filmed in a single continuous take – and one of their newest songs Love used 29 robots and a whole lot of maths to achieve a kaleidoscopic visual feast. But now, they’ve teamed up with Blender Studio and animation directors Lucas Zanotto and Will Anderson for their new single Impulse Purchase, their most digitally inspired video to date.

“With Impulse Purchase it really was the definition of collaboration,” says Will. “It was a mix of Lucas Zanotto – the amazing Italian artist/designer known for his deceptively simple yet clever and humorous 3D work – my recent love of procedure and live motion capture in animation, and Blender Studio, who came in to support and help create something greater than the sum of its parts.” The music video follows some of Lucas’ signature digital characters, playful, geometric avatars that bounce around a maximalist world that is exploding with shapes. However, OK Go’s videos always go the extra mile – these avatars are motion captures of singer Damian Kulash’s face in real time, directly responding to his eyes, lips and head movements.

“I’m very drawn to Blender’s open-source ethos: the sharing of tools, knowledge, and creative work so anyone can use, modify, and contribute. We quickly realised the most exciting thing about this project was that it wasn’t just going to be a music video – it’s something people can actually download, play with, and make their own,” says Will. “You can link it to your face and sing along, change the character, explore how the nodes fit together, remix it, adapt it, and share it yourself… all in a single .blend file!” For the first time, OK Go and the animation team actually invite the viewer to be a part of their master plans by having the entire project be open-source. Created as a “super-meta call-out”, the video is a critical look at how algorithms curate our choices, creating impulses that we didn’t quite choose ourselves, through a “constantly morphing, dynamic, and unpredictable” visual dialogue with the digital form itself.

“The whole video is made using Blender’s procedural tool Geometry Nodes – a node-based way of creating complex geometry that can change dynamically, involve simulations, and ultimately drive a performance in an adaptive way,” says Will. Hooked up to a free live facial motion capture app on the iPhone, Damian’s face was fed into Blender that gave the filmmakers a file where they could change the parameters of the character, given it its joyous and erratic rhythms, all sourced from real time reactions. “It’s not about making the most perfect, polished animation,” says Will, “it’s about pushing limits, being surprised, amused, and involved in the process. The result is unpredictable and organic, almost like watching an impulse take shape in real time.” With this video, a social commentary, an education on 3D animation, and collaborative project all come in one colourful package that is already a stand-out in OK Go’s impressive oeuvre.

The open-source file is currently available on Blender’s website.