Today is: music Video for Tourniquet by Hem
Directed by: Jordan Bruner
Animated by: Greg Lytle and Jordan Bruner
 
Simply fabulous. The story of an “artist fox”, who run in with some meaner foxes and moves from the nature to the city. Here there are everything you could find “in a city”.The sides that look more beautiful are emphasized: sophisticated food, fame, party, alcohol, sex … But, maybe these are not the beautiful of life, as the matter of fact, the “artist fox” goes back to his nature with -maybe- the true love.
 
This is a brand new video, as Jordan said: “The band contacted me last spring. They gave me the album to listen to and sort of had a couple ideas for songs that they wanted music videos made for. There was one song at the very end – “Tourniquet” – that I really liked and an idea popped into my head when I first listened to it. They were into it and from there I gave them a synopsis of what I wanted to create. [...] I like to work with animal imagery a lot (as you can see in Jordan Bruner’s tumblr), and I had this idea of all these animals walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and taking over an abandoned city. That was the original idea, and it went from there.”
 
Regarding the message and the intent of this video, Jordan wants to show both, positive and negative sides of the city, as he said in an interview ” I don’t think it’s totally negative. I was trying to show a progression of animals adapting some more human-like characteristics. Trying on clothes and talking on bluetooths and cellphones and going to art openings. So on the one hand the city offers creative types a refuge from the wilderness where some jerks might knock over your art project, but then on the other hand there is this other jerk who screams on a bluetooth and sometimes there are horses smoking crack on the street. And then sometimes in the city you might drink too much and become a stripper, but then on the other hand you could work on your art projects all night and people will actually see them and appreciate them. So there are advantages to and disadvantages to the wilderness and the city. Hopefully the fox can split his time between both in the future.”
 
This video utilize hand-made puppets, and the technical process involved drawing and animation. “I started with storyboards and put together an animatic based on the concept, sent that the band and from there we bounced more ideas back and forth. From there I started making all the artwork and we started animating. After that initial process, I would send them updates periodically, and the feedback was usually very positive.” said Jordan “It started with creating all the artwork, character designs and paintings and doing some animation tests. We spent a good amount of time learning how to refine assembling the puppets. Greg Lytle helped a lot with this, and animated the puppets on an animation stand using a green screen. I would import the animation into After Effects, key everything out and composite. The puppets are all about maybe a foot tall. The animation stand is 24” x 46””
 
All the puppets are “still alive”, Jordan still have them in his studio and he would be like to have an art show with them.