I am proud to present Lipstick Makeup, my first ever official music video. I have always wanted to direct music videos, having explored the possibilities early in my animation career with some fan videos and an official stop-motion recreation, and this was finally an opportunity to bring an original vision to life. Thump and I have been orbiting the idea of doing a video together for a couple years and the stars finally aligned in late 2022.

Director, Animator, VFX, Story, Editor: Dylan Woodley
Cinematography: Antonio Zapiain Luna, Dylan Woodley
Lighting Director: Cody Mackenzie
Produced by: Ben Benjamin, Dylan Woodley, Lucas Tamaren
AC, AD: Antonio Zapiain Luna
Production Team: Jake Levens, Antonio Zapiain Luna, Connor Kovack
Choreography: Carlye Tamaren
Dancers: Carlye Tamaren, Natalie Pelletier, Chuck Scull, Christopher Aguirre, Sam Solomon, Madison Schumm, Mia Josephine, Daniel Praddo
Colour: Oliver Salk, Dylan Woodley

The fake mirror shot was an enormous effort but I’m very happy with how it turned out. At first I wasn’t sure how we were going to pull it off, but it quickly became clear that the whole set would have to be custom built from scratch.

I spent a weekend travelling between Home Depot and Lucas’ garage, mocking up plans and building a huge mirrored facade. Two identical desks (one of which we never ended up seeing), two identical mirror frames, and a massive brick wall facade provided by Ben.

The mirror itself is a fun piece too! There’s a slot that allows you to put an actual mirror into the frame, or slide it out and reveal a real life mirrored version of the frame. This meant we could shoot into the mirror and capture real mirrored footage, but also take it out to break reality and have Lucas climb through.

It was a ton of work for a shot that lasts only like three seconds but I was fixated on nailing that opening story sequence. Absolutely worth it.

The bendy dance animations were some of the original concepts for this video. I first created animations like this back in 2018 after playing around with photos I took of a friend at a park, and sat on the video for years and years. When I heard Lipstick Makeup, this video came to mind and I knew I wanted to blow out the concept into a full music video.

The animation itself is pretty simple. Freeze frame, isolate, digital puppet. Some additional compositing tricks were used in a couple shots but overall this stuff was kept pretty simple to keep within the scope of the project. Anyway I love the bendy guys and I hope you do too.

This bit was a nice challenge! Took a long time to track, isolate, and animate every building but the result is a lovely final shot that encapsulates the silliness of the video as a whole. I enjoyed imbuing every building with its own personality, that little guy in the bottom left going ham being my favourite. By the end it is just flickering back and forth like an absolute maniac.

And I shouldn't do this but here's a little peek at my After Effects composition for this shot. It seems organized to me, and that's all that matters. Below you can see tracking paths on the null objects, a lovely little list of layers, and the stack of layers used in the composition.