NEW YORK CITY — The-Artery (www.the-artery.com) created a new CG-driven music video for electronic rock band The Living Tombstone. Chosen is off the band’s upcoming “zero_one” album and was created using remote motion-capture production techniques.
Uri Schutzer directed the project, which uses a futuristic theme to visualize The Living Tombstone’s anonymous five band members. In it, band members are concealed by neon-colored, technology-driven costumes. Each member breaks out of their stasis tube in a next-generation laboratory. Futuristic vehicles are also present throughout the video, which culminates with a stage performance. The project was brought to life entirely through computer graphics and motion capture.
“I wanted to create a high-end narrative in the vein of those trailers for superhero movies,” recalls Schutzer. “My first call was to (The-Artery’s) Vico (Sharabani), whose team had the necessary talent and resources to fulfill this ambitious vision. The result is breathtaking. Whenever I share the final render to my colleagues, no one believes me when I reveal that it isn’t real people filmed in costumes.”
“I fell in love with the concept immediately and I knew, from the start, that CG was the perfect and only way to get the imagery right,” adds Sharabani, who is both founder and executive creative director at the studio. “It was also an opportunity to continue to lift our remote pipeline towards an exciting direction as well as a big step for our capabilities into virtual talent creation and virtual production improvements. We’re just as much technologists as we are artists. The motion-capture elements were designed and carried out right from our own homes.”
The project came together using a mix of hardware and software tools, including 3ds Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D, Z-Brush, Kinect, Redshift, Octane, Flame, and Illustrator. Sharabani handled the editing and color grading. He was also a Flame artist, along with Aarif Attarwala and Asaf Yeger. Joe Gruntfast and Dave Stewart served as CG supervisors, with Grundfast handling motion capture. Grace Casas was C4D artist. Title design was created by Jesse Johanning.
Represented by Warner Music Group, The Living Tombstone boasts over 1.2 billion views and 4M subscribers on YouTube.
“We had a vision of this grand sci-fi video, but had abandoned hope of getting it thanks to coronavirus' effect on production,” says the band. “When The Artery delivered their incredible imaginative visuals, we were absolutely blown away. From the seamless environments to the body movement of the band members, it was everything we wanted it to be.”