The team at Lyric Vids prides themselves on the art they produce and after hundreds of highly produced videos, they are certainly building their way up to be the experts in the world of lyric videos. Throughout the years, they have experimented more with different forms of illustration techniques and animations because let’s face it, who doesn’t love bringing cartoons to life? Their artists have explored all different styles of animation including era-specific and culturally inspired cartoons. Let’s talk about some of our favorites:
- Paul Anka – Put Your Head On My Shoulder (feat. Olivia Newton-John)
This lyric video is heavily influenced by the popular Hanna-Barbera era Saturday morning cartoons of the 1960s such as The Jetsons, Josie and the Pussycats and The Flintstones with the thick black character outlines.This style of illustration is known as mid-century modern style (mid-mod) which was influenced by it’s real life post-war American design movement. These animations can be characterized by quirky angular characters, cartoon eyes and bold vintage colors that brilliantly represent the modernist trend at the time which has since been recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement. This style has a deep vintage feel that showcases it’s simplicity without compromising it’s creative dexterity. The vivid 1960’s pastel color palette is bold and scintillating with purples, blues, red, yellow and green, which add and effectively elevate the vintage cartoon theme. This is further perpetuated with the custom character design of Olivia Newton-John, with her signature blonde bob and piercing blue eyes and Paul Anka with the 1950s Pompadour hairstyle and those classic eyebrows; these animated character’s are truly flawless representations of the era-specific style.
- VAVO, nicopop., ZOHARA – Why Do I?
This lyric video is seemingly influenced by the 1980s / 1990s style comic book cartoons such as the animated series of X-Men, Batman or Super Friends. The 2D illustrations in this video live in a similar space as the previous, with bold solid colors and thick black outlines but slightly more realistic. This is reflected in the ‘Bronze Age’ of comics where the art style became less surreal and the characters were given more human traits, paving the way for the cinematic world of comics we know today. Although there is no definitive title, it certainly falls into the traditional cel-style animation. The cel was crucial for the time as it allowed parts of each frame to be repeated from frame to frame which saved tons of labor. Although the team at Lyric Vids use modern software for these processes, it is not dissimilar to that vintage layering process and still reflects a more focused character based animation. This style of cartoon was super popular before television marketing regulations existed and were considered “toy-based cartoons”. I would certainly buy a VAVO action hero set – both in and out of costume!
- Gary Kemp – Waiting for the Band
This lyric video features a more nostalgic theme of childhood wonder. It is more cinematic in the sense of it’s storytelling and modern 2D style animation and who better to be inspired by than Disney, the true pioneers of cartoon based storytelling. Watching Disney movies is a staple to anybody’s upbringing and watching Gary Kemp’s lyric video is meant to stir up those sentimental feelings. The illustration style is comparable to Disney’s modern art style you see in Anastasia, Treasure Planet and Thumbelina with the drawings becoming brighter, more detailed and polished. Even the animals illustrated in this style tend to have more human-like qualities with emotive expressions. In this music video and similar to other cartoons of this style, you’ll notice the highly detailed backgrounds such as the city buildings behind the boy. The animated characters and objects tend to boast more flat solid colors in comparison to the backdrops which feature grainier and more elaborate color schemes. This animation style is one of the most recognizable which is why it’s powerful when geared toward evocative themes.
- Head in a Box – Feel: At Home
This music video is influenced by the darker styled illustrations of Tim Burton movies such as Corpse Bride where the human (and non-human) characters have gothic attributes. Pallid skin, dark eyes with greyscale color palettes is a recurrent aesthetic. This style of animation reflects German Expressionism more than any other art style. Beginning as a modern art movement, it is now used in cinema and features a dreamlike unreality and invokes feelings of psychological tension. This art style can be characterized by jagged edges, visually disjointed spaces similar to that of old gothic architecture and relies heavily on the use of shadows and silhouettes to heighten a feeling of dread or despair. In cartoons it often features emotionally tortured heroes and antiheroes and is now often referred to as “Burtonesque”. Using this animation technique, the “Feel: At Home” music video effectively depicts the grim storyline and song meaning.
- Merkules & The Game – Death Wish
The ‘Death Wish’ lyric video is also a modern style animation influenced by popular graphic novels such as Hellboy, The Walking Dead and Batman. This form of animation is heavily character based featuring similar aesthetics to that of older comic books with thick black outlines but turns the detailed character realism up a few notches. The stories are often told through a sequence of drawings known as sequential art and rely heavily on dialogue text to drive the narrative. They are laid out in boxy frames or panels with thick borders. In this music video, the lyrics creatively take the place of the speech bubbles and the visuals are relatively intricate and follow a strict red, yellow, black and white color scheme. The likeness of both Merkules and The Game’s cartoon depictions is dead on which is key for artist recognizability and the fast-paced scene cuts depict the action-pact nature of typical graphic novels. With graphic novels growing in popularity at unprecedented rates, using this art style for your music video could be a huge hit with your fans.
- Parker Bent – Chips N Guacamole (Jingle Punks Remix)
This is probably one of our funnest animations to date! The ‘Chips N Guacamole’ lyric video features the 8-bit style digital art found in retro video games of yesteryear such as Super Mario, Space Invaders and Zelda. Often referred to as ‘Pixel Art’, this animation form has become one of the top trending graphic styles in recent years. These themes evoke warm and fuzzy childhood nostalgia of the good ol’ days which explains why they are making such a huge comeback in gaming and cinema. Dating back to the 1970s, the term pixel stemmed from the words ‘picture’ and ‘element’ and is the smallest unit of a digital image, shaped as a square and features only 1 color. 8-bit graphics refers to the (limited) color capabilities of said pixel. This animation style is simple yet creative and when used in a music video such as this, it really adds a dynamic energy to the visuals.
- DU5T1 – No Part Of My Love (ft. Karl Wolf & Temi)
The ‘No Part Of My Love’ music video is stunning and it is obvious that the animation is heavily influenced by Japanese Animation and Manga. Referred to as ‘Anime’, this art expression is often hand drawn and features 2D characters with big eyes and exaggerated actions or expressions and is used in popular tv shows such as Sailor Moon and Pokemon. Larger heads, unique hairstyles, elongated limbs and bright colors are other common features. Unlike other cartoon styles, Anime has target audiences of both children and adults and often revolves around heavier themes. In this music video, the main character is a secret spy in a futuristic space themed world who sleeps with the enemy to get what she wants. This art style is extremely recognizable and so popular that Netflix reported a 50% increase in anime viewership over the past year.