PROFESSIONAL PROJECT: WE ARE GIANTS

Music videos are wonderful ways for animators to show their artistic abilities and collaborate with well known musicians. Rising stars Lindsey Stirling and Dia Frampton collaborated on a song titled, We Are Giants. This song's music video was recently released out on Youtube, and I am amazed by the imagery this music video has. On this post, I will talk about each scene and break down each pat I find interesting.

A majority of music videos start out with the setting, which is depicted as a futuristic part of San Francisco with a coastline and wind turbines promoting clean air. The city is then zoomed in to reveal a clean futuristic Chinatown. Then, a young teenager version of Lindsey appears walking through the market streets for a chance to get a tomato before they are sold out.



I really like the color contrast from this art style, especially from the tomato. The tomato stands out as a bright red pigment among all of the other vegetables on the stand showing its importance to the entire music video's plot.

Once Lindsey retrieves a tomato, she leaves the market stand, only to begin using the tomato as her weapon. We can see behind Lindsey that a Godzilla like creature lurks behind her and is about to invade...

The fighting then breaks out in town as the Godzilla like creature has a showdown with a yellow squid monster with several eyes, even on the tentacles.

I find the art style to be very wonderful without any black outlines. This gives the music video a 3D appearance in a 2D platform. This shot of Lindsey's hair perfectly describes that with her geometric hair strands showing  2 point perspective, which I find very appealing to me.

Here we can Lindsey begin her power up stance to throw her tomato as far as she can.

The rising action of the story begins with here, as Lindsey throws the tomato at super sonic speed aiming at Godzilla and the squid in order to stop the madness.

Godzilla notices Lindsey for throwing the tomato and try to catch her as he continue fighting the squid. I appreciate the variety of camera shots like in this scene showing the two characters' reactions.

Lindsey then decides to go to the big tower, a risky idea, that she decides to go for anyway. From my understanding, the tower is the most notable thing about the city, as if this were the new Golden Gate Bridge to this futuristic San Francisco.

As Lindsey runs to the top of the tower, the audience beings to see a potential ally- a young boy.

This little boy recognizes Lindsey as a hero be being the only one willing to fight the monsters. He then allies with Lindsey and help her by giving Lindsey back her prized tomato.

Once Lindsey reaches the top of the tower, she gets a front row seat of monster tug-of-war. As she studies their moves, Lindsey formulates a way to distract the monsters.She then remembers the tomato in her backpack, only to be missing.

Once again, Lindsey's geometric hair appears to be 3 dimensional by having the ends of her hair point to the camera.

As the monsters fight, they unintentionally destroy the tower, knocking it over and leave Lindsey hanging.

As Lindsey is left hanging, she gets herself up to high ground.

From there, the little boy and Lindsey make first contact. It ends up being a positive experience, as he appears to have retrieved the lost tomato.

The little boy then attempts to toss the tomato to Lindsey upwards.

The irony behind this screenshot is that the ground now looks like a monster with the water fountain eyes and concrete snout.

Here we see the climax of the entire music video, as Lindsey attempts to catch the tomato, but ends up biting the tomato and the tomato becomes obsolete. I really enjoyed this part of this animation for having large amounts of anticipation building up for Lindsey catching the tomato, but failing in a very dramatic way.

Since the tomato trick didn't work, Lindsey decides to warp herself to space. While I enjoy the lighting of this scene, I don't understand why Lindsey didn't do this in the beginning of the music video.

All of the town is surprised Lindsey has space powers, and wishes they had her powers.

Another thing I have noticed is the coloring. The townspeople are in dark and gray colors, while Lindsey wears a variety of colors and patterns, inferring that Lindsey stands out in the city and is not like the rest of the crowd.

Lindsey beams herself up to the stars to find her answer for defeating the monsters. This depiction of space is calming and sticks to the theme of using around 3 to 4 main colors for each scene.

What is Lindsey doing in space? Why, she is activating her violin powers, because why not. After all, Lindsey is a violinist, and any Lindsey Stirling music video isn't complete without a violin part.

Lindsey then descends down to Earth and plays a violin solo while Lucy is in the sky with diamonds in her angry eyes.

After the solo, the monsters enjoy her song and are amazed by her playing abilities. This song is the first sign of friendship as seen by Godzilla's smile.

The monsters apologize for their behavior by rebuilding the tower and the remaining wreckage together.

After the mess has been cleaned, Godzilla and the squid part out to sea and head home, since it is sunset. The squid and Godzilla then play fight while walking back home, only to peacefully depart under the ocean.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you are looking for some inspiration and a different take on animated music videos, this music video offers all of those things. I enjoyed the bright colors, perspective points, camera shots, and scene for We Are Giants. This music video also features a noticeable plot line with a unique set of protagonists and antagonists, which we can all relate to.

Go watch the full music video through this link!