The animated video for Divino Niño's latest single is a morphing journey through colour

Camilo Medina is a Colombian illustrator whose work we’ve previously admired for its bold, psychedelic, somewhat weird visuals. During our initial conversation, the Chicago-based creative told us about his love of music, both through playing in a band and creating work for music publications like Pitchfork. That band, as it turns out, is Divino Niño and with an album due to be released this summer, Camilo and his fellow band members (Javier Forero, Guillermo Rodriguez, and Pierce Codina) have worked with animator Thami AKA Recsoverto to produce a standout video for the album’s title track, Foam.

“I first got into design with the hopes of making money designing logos and websites, but music has been my artistic outlet since I was very young,” Camilo explains. “It’s been only recently that I’ve connected with my visual side with an artistic sense and now my music and art inform each other constantly.” This interwoven relationship is clear as Divino Niño’s music seems the perfect soundtrack for flicking through his portfolio, making it hard to know which creative outlet is the inspiration, and which is the byproduct.

When it came to collaborating with someone for the video of Foam, Camilo knew Thami would be perfect. “I stumbled on Thami’s work on the ‘Explore’ section of Instagram and immediately started following him. I was drawn to it because it looked fucking twisted to me – a very sweet balance of pretty colours and beautiful animation flow, but with insane imagery.”

Camilo reached out to Thami with a “brief that was really free”, the Parisian animator and illustrator tells us. Providing sound and mood boards to dictate the ambience of the video, the only real direction Thami was given was that Divino Niño would like an underwater universe. “Camilo knew my drawing style and he pushed me to continue in this way,” Thami explains, “it was very pleasant because by trusting me it allowed me to dare trying new things and to get out of my comfort zone.”

The result is an animation that mimics the energetic, jovial music of the quartet. Never resting on more image for longer than a fraction of a second, it constantly morphs through scenes in an adept, almost mesmerising manner. “I really wanted to focus on the strength and energy that you can feel when you swim,” he outlines. Following the protagonist through a multi-coloured world, Foam is an abstract piece which retains a sense of reality through Thami’s use of character. “You simply follow the main character in a unique exploration,” he concludes, “it’s up to you to decide if it’s a real underwater journey, only a cerebral journey, an introspection, something solitary or something else.”