CGI and IRL mix beautifully in a duo of sinister, magical vids for Brooklyn band Yeasayer

Mixing body horror and beauty, director trio New Media Ltd (Ryan Dickie, Abigail Horton and Mike Anderson) has created two bonkers new videos for Brooklyn band Yeasayer. Each forms a very eerie narrative where computer generated men, women and creatures merge their limbs and their stories to create something very disquieting indeed.

The peculiar wooden characters of the video for Silly Me are redolent of the title character in Jan Svankmajer’s Little Otik; while the fantasy lands in I Am Chemistry have a more magical feel, albeit a sinister one.

Making the videos was a painstaking process, something evident in the skill and detail they show; everything in each frame was handmade and hand-painted, 3D scanned and recreated digitally. Mike explains: “We use a unique approach, pretty much everything in every frame is handmade and hand-painted. We then 3D scan all of it, bringing it into the computer so it’s entirely recreated digitally.

“We record motion-capture of performers and apply the data to the characters for the animation. The lighting is all done in the computer. So while the final product is ostensibly CGI, nearly everything you’re seeing is a digital record of something we directed or fabricated in real-life. Best of all worlds.”

New Media Ltd, we are a directing trio comprised of Ryan Dickie, Abigail Horton and Mike Anderson.