Project Description

“Surprise is the special ingredient.”

Fabio Catapano and Giuseppe Santillo create a hyperkinetic musical sensation for K-Conjog’s ‘Slashes III’. Using a formulaic workflow and an experimental method, Fabio and Guiseppe produced pulsating motion graphics in Notch.

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Fabio Catapano

“I’m a designer, artist, coder, and creative. I make experimental art to explore and express both the physical and the digital world. My favourite digital mediums include motion and interaction design as well as 2D and 3D programs and other forms of graphic design. My primary inspiration comes from a Japanese aesthetics concept called wabi-sabi, which regards the transient, such as nature, textures, and light, and the imperfect as beautiful.”

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Giuseppe Santillo

“I am a Media Artist and designer from Naples, Italy. Fabio and I first met at college in Naples and began VJing together. I now live and work in London, producing work in the field of live performance, motion design and photography. I introduced Notch to my workflow around six months ago, and it’s become an invaluable tool in my skillset.”

Vision

Giuseppe: “The video for Slashes III is the latest of an ongoing collaboration with music producer K-conjog. In 2018 I created a 3D scan of his head for his album cover ‘Magic Spookey Ears’. The album artwork later inspired my design for his live shows which I created entirely in Notch. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from the live audiences encouraged us to further explore the 3D model in music video format.”

“The overarching concept in my work with K-conjog is the perception of form between sculpture and photography as it changes with the progress of new technologies.”

Production

Fabio: “I saw Slashes III as an incredible opportunity to experiment with Notch; I had only picked up the tool a month or so prior. I was curious to see if it was possible to work freely as artists and have a solid outcome as a production company.”

“I started by analysing the song and defining a narrative arc based on its waveform. I then organised the sections as layers in Notch. This step helped us to organise the word and split tasks; it also proved beneficial when rendering out for editing. During the production phase, I’d say that the approach was very spontaneous, we knew since the beginning that we would play with Notch and have fun with the outcomes.”

“We used a combination of Procedurals, Deformers with Sound Effectors to create motion. The Sound Modifier helped us to bring a new life to the animation. Sometimes it was applied directly to the effect and sometimes to the lights and cameras.”

“Once we were happy with the scenes, we rendered out as 4K image sequences for editing. Notch helped us to visualise ideas quickly, but further along the line, it’s speed, and rendering quality helped us deliver the video to a high standard.”

“The amazing part of this project is that we didn’t know what to expect, the experimentation is part of the process, and the surprise is the special ingredient. So in that sense, I think we achieved what we wanted. We know this isn’t the classic video clip you’ll see on tv, but we have some fans that loved our experimental approach.”

Giuseppe: “Creating Slashes III was just a good opportunity for us to play with the software. If you’re having fun creating, people will enjoy watching!”

Credits:

Client: K-Conjog
Label: Schole Inc.
Production Company: Studio Entropia 
Notch Designer: Fabio Catapano & Giuseppe Santillo
Video Director: Fabio Catapano & Giuseppe Santillo
Video Editor: Fabio Catapano