Sit back, breath deep, and drift away into the liquid world of this eight-minute visual odyssey created by French director/animator Thomas Charier for Düsseldorf piano/electronic duo Grandbrothers.

Thomas Charier: “This was my graduation project and then became a one-person personal project after I finished school.

“A self-creative project can be hard to focus on when it spans several years. So during the production, I secretly attended several Grandbrothers concerts allowing me to motivate myself to continue the adventure but also to find inspiration. Their show is just as stunning as their musical universe.

“The works of Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger have been my biggest inspiration. I revisited the minimalist aesthetic and its principles in an animation where everything is ambiguous.

“The use of simple shapes refers to what we imagine with our eyes closed during a musical listening. These solid geometric shapes are the foundation of minimalist aesthetics, they can be compared to musical notes of a musical score.
 

“This project mixes traditional animation with 3D imaging techniques. The use of 3D scenes allows me to play and superimpose 2D animations in space.

“The big technical challenge was to create dynamic 2D foam retaining the flexibility of a 3D scene. I have a very bad hardware setup (Macbook Pro 2010) which was frustrating but was perfect for limiting my 3D goals.

“My workflow solution is to create 3D scenes, then place custom 2D ripple animations on the water with camera projections. When all of them are timed with the song and composed in space, I render each ripple from their respective camera. I rework them to create collisions with the environment and themselves.

“Finally, I replace the newly animated waves in the 3D space and make a final render from my scene camera.”
 

Director/animator: Thomas Charier
Music: Grandbrothers