Dezeen Magazine

Marbling effect in Bipolar Sunshine music video harks back to the 1980s

Music: Hungarian director Tomek Ducki borrowed trends from 1980s eastern-European poster design to create this animated video for Bipolar Sunshine's single Daydreamer.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

The three-minute film depicts the Manchester pop singer Bipolar Sunshine – aka Adio Marchant – with other stylised figures, against animated overlays and backgrounds of rapidly shifting colours, objects and shapes.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

Tomek Ducki's imagery in the film was initially informed by the aesthetic of previous Bipolar Sunshine videos – a look that reminded the director "of the approach used in posters in eastern Europe before the 1990s, with flat and solid covering colours".

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

"One of our animators did pretty deep research on shirt patterns from the 1980s, and I refreshed my knowledge about Polish and Hungarian posters from the same era," the director told Dezeen.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

The film visualises the sense of frustration created between two spouses that have been geographically separated from each other.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

"In the music and lyrics there is a sense of a loss of direction – like movement which leads nowhere; a loop without an end," Ducki told Dezeen.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

The director plays on this theme by showing the characters tied to different ends of a ribbon or band – a visual motif that allowed him to simultaneously represent the characters' connectedness and separation.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

Other scenes show characters being orbited by a planet-like sphere tied to their heads.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

The result is "a combination of images and elements that are a visual interpretation of the song and lyrics rather than a narrative story".

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

The quickly shifting marbled segments that appear in some parts of the video were created by animating still image cross-sections of multi-coloured clay – a practise termed 'strata-cut animation'.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

In the final edit, Ducki combined this with 2D and 3D animation, along with drawings and painted backgrounds, to create the video's distinctive look.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

"One shot was drawn, then animated in 3D, and then covered by a clay animation," explained the director. "But it was sometimes the other way around and our 3D animations would follow the organic movements of the clay."

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

"The most interesting part was to mix 3D objects with the clay texture animations. The clay movements were so quirky and the CGI was so precise. It became a very interesting effect by the end in my opinion."

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

Located in four different countries, Ducki's production team of five worked against a tight deadline to complete the video. "It was an organic production, and we improvised a lot," said the director.

Bipolar Sunshine video by Tomek Ducki

Daydreamer will be released as a single on 26 January.