In stark contrast to last year’s darkly elegant vibe, the Elastic crew opened the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards this evening with this crazed poke-in-the-eye packed with glitchy, irreverent, ultra-GIF-able chaos plus a bonus Donald cameo.

This year Elastic director Patrick Clair shares creative duties with VMA EP Lee Lodge (The Oscars, MTV Movie Awards, etc.) corralling the talents of a dozen designers and animators into 90 seconds of blissed-out nostalgia and fun.

Patrick Clair: “For this year’s MTV awards, we wanted to celebrate what makes the VMAs unique. These events are wild, ugly, glossy and unpredictable.

“They are simultaneously awful and exhilarating, trailing a legacy of lewd attention grabs, celebrity misbehavior and pop culture excess. That’s what makes them so popular, fun and compelling – that’s why we watch.

“We trawled back through the past 20 years of MTV awards shows. We sampled iconic moments, turning them into disrespectful loops of animation and graphic junk – recycled for a 2015 package that could be bright, vivid, chaotic and disposable.

“Last year, we worked to create something refined, focused, disciplined – we exalted the circle and praised the graphic gods of minimalism. This year, we wanted to do something completely different, we wanted to tear down the house.

“The result is a deranged and vivid echo chamber of MTV’s legacy, a celebration of what makes it good, bad and completely true to itself.

“It’s a grotesque carnival of visual effects. I’m ashamed, the team is ashamed, our mothers are definitely ashamed – but at the same time, we couldn’t be more bloody happy with it.”

Design Studio: Elastic
Original Illustrations and Cell Animation: Michael Relth
Creative Direction: Patrick Clair & Lee Lodge
Designers: Paul Kim, Kevin Heo, Jeff Han, Henry DeLeon
Animators: Sam Sparks, Peter Murphy, Yongsub Song, Steven Do, Raoul Marks, Claudia Yi Leon, Trix Taylor
Editor: Doron Dor
Assistant Editor: Pieter Vilijoen, Alyssa Oh
Associate Producer: Danny Hirsch
Producer:Carol Salek
Head of Production: Kim Christensen
Executive Producer: Jennifer Sofio Hall