How's That - Jesse Kanda (2013)
Love this vid and want to break down a few of the pieces that really stood out to me:
Additional mileage from video warps - softbody sims are hard, so a lot of what I love about this video is getting the most mileage out of existing technical investment with small tweaks rather than additional work. In this case, a lightweight video filter thrown on top of 3D sim activates many more forms out of the initial design. This pattern in digital art of taking novel technical forms and running them through novel functions proves incredibly powerful
2. Material swaps - an extremely powerful but simple technique is the way that 3D animation can render the exact scene and camera moves with different materials. It's incredibly alien to lived experience and recalls the complex robo-cam shots of 90s music videos, but is foundationally trivial to 3D animation.
3. Pushing simulation - the most complex effect in the video is the second half, where skeletal forms seem to move underneath the collapsing figure (in tune with the beat no less). It's very possible this could be done physically accurate with a dynamic softbody sim responding to animating figures underneath (and driving that animation with a filtered audio channel). That said, this would melt computers in 2023 so I think there's really only 1-2 shots where this is actually the case and another few where dynamic pressure forces on the softbody (easier to sim due to no dynamic collisions) are continuing that theme. I call this out 1. for the impressive use of technique in 2013 and 2. the more impressive artistic disposition to understand the limitations of this technique and work around it with the above and below mentioned techniques
4. Hard, Strobed, and Dynamic Lighting - an incredibly important technique in Kanda's work in this period (and many videos of this style in general) is the lighting technique
i) hard lighting - creates a highly defined image, which much in the way highly edited editorial photography of the 90s really accentuates the contrast ratio to give the image a very defined form and sell the realism
ii) strobed and dynamic lighting - incredibly high leverage (impact-effort) technique for tying shots to one another and to the underlying track. It costs significantly less to animate a light to the beat than it is to animate new geometry (much the way it is cheaper to strobe live plates rather than pay for new production design). Likewise for the rapid cuts back-and-forth to shots that are used throughout. In particular the light pans in the second half are a great example of artistic depth getting visual mileage out of exploring the way form changes under subtle light variation rather than requiring a new effect
