Big Button

Making the video

We make a wide range of films at Big Button, and this includes music videos. Northern Irish power-pop band Ash (Girl from Mars, Shining Light, A Life Less Ordinary) are back, and we conceived, illustrated and animated Return of White Rabbit in-house.

It's a dark tale of love, jealousy and revenge set to the band's bass-heavy, frenetic comeback single. Nico Jones, our lead Motion Graphics Artist who directed and animated the video, explains:

Ash wanted something other than a performance-driven video, and we were given free rein in the treatment stages, with the only demand being that the characters ‘have real attitude’. I’m a huge fan so it was a real buzz to work on the official video for the comeback single, and there was massive pressure to deliver something they’d be proud of.

The band hadn’t seen anything other than a very basic edit by the time we presented them with the finished article in their rehearsal rooms. I tried to hide my nerves as they gathered round the laptop for what seemed like a very long four minutes, and was very relieved when they gave it the seal of approval.

The video has a very distinctive illustration style. Shane Holley illustrated the characters for the film:

I’m a massive fan of Tomer Hanuka and how he uses extreme facial expressions and bright contrasting colours to light a character and create movement within a still illustration. So the style was definitely influenced by his work.

Each character was illustrated at three different stages of their life. Then within each of those stages each had around eight to ten facial expressions illustrated separately. A lot of the components with the expressions could be transferred between each other to save time, so we managed to get the total down to around fifty head illustrations.

The song precedes Ash's innovative release schedule, where the band will release 26 singles over the next year, one every fortnight - and you can watch Return of White Rabbit here.

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