Music:Â animator and director Danny Madden of Ornana Films referred to the design of old French lithograph posters to create this multi-layered illustrated video for Pink Floyd vocalist and musician David Gilmour.
Around 9,000 frames of hand-drawn animation went into creating the short film to accompany The Girl in the Yellow Dress, which tells the story of a woman dressed in yellow paying a visit to a jazz club.
"David Gilmour's creative team had seen our previous short film and were drawn to the dimensionality and movement in that style, so they asked if we'd bring a similar technique to their song," Ornana Films told Dezeen.
The film opens on illustrated type, which is blown away from the lens to reveal a jazz band – drawn with purposefully sketchy and perpetually shifting lines.
Their conversation reveals that the distracted saxophone player is waiting for a girl to arrive at the club they're performing in – based on a live-action film shoot overseen by Aubrey Powell at Hipgnosis, the creative director for Pink Floyd, which provided a reference for the freehand drawings.
Moving to the exterior of the jazz club, a pair of alleycats watch a mysterious coated lady enter the club, who reveals herself to be the eponymous girl in the yellow dress.
As she walks past the club-goers, her dress is reflected in their eyes. A man wearing a panama hat sits smoking, while the animation itself shifts like liquid or smoke from one person to another.
"The animation was touched by several hands to get the layered contours, vibrant colours, and exaggerated character design of old French Lithograph posters," said Ornana. "We wanted to create a moving version of that look, as if each frame had all the layers stamped on the page."
"We animated with pencil, then contour lines were gone over with a brush tip marker," they added. "We used gouache to get nice life in the varying brushstrokes, then we layered the contours over the paint layer in the compositing step so that the colours would do interesting things when they ran together."
The film gives viewers insights into the daydreams of each of the club-goers as they imagine dancing with the woman.
As one individual lights a cigarette she is momentarily transformed into a flame on the end of a matchstick before it is dropped by the man and he burns himself.
Finally the woman moves to the dance floor with the man in the panama hat, and the film focuses on her eyes as she looks at the sad saxophone player over his shoulder.
After the dance concludes the woman storms out, with her dress reflected in the band leader's eyes as she goes.
Gilmour – vocalist and guitarist of progressive rock band Pink Floyd – released his Rattle That Lock Album on 18 September 2015.
Dezeen previously featured the artist's Rattle That Lock video, which used animation to re-tell Satan's fall from heaven.
Project credits:
Music: David Gilmour
Lyrics: Polly Samson
Director: Danny Madden
Creative Director: Aubrey Powell
Producer: Fiz Oliver