Lapido

I tend to get into projects that are really far from my “core skills”, sometimes just because I want to work with interesting people.

It was a personal highlight in my career when I got the chance to work with my favourite musician singing in Spanish, Jose Ignacio Lapido, back in 2018. He had seen a time lapse of a quick sketch I made and proposed me to work on a video for his single “Lo que llega y se nos va”. Talk about working outside of your comfort zone, I said yes before thinking what I was getting into. The process was an absolute blast and left me thinking I should explore animation more… That never happened.

Fast forward to October 2022 and I am talking to Jose Ignacio about making another video. “This time I want to hand paint it” I hear me saying… Will I ever learn?

The video is released today Wednesday 15th March on the Ides of March.

Lapido’s musicianship is second to none but it’s his lyrics that make him special. He constantly plays with very traditional idioms and expressions to create very smart visual metaphors. His themes normally revolve around the nonsensical behaviour of people or society but always from his perplexed point of view.

When approaching what to tell in the video, I had very present that overall theme in his body of work. So the video, as is the song, represents concentric narrative circles in which we travel from reality to his inner vision of the world only to close the circle again in reality.

His process in developing and releasing work is very hands-on. And I wanted the video to reflect on this. So instead of hiding my limitations as an animator (I would never call myself one), I relished on them and tried to bring the process to the lowest minimum so you can see the building blocks of the video all the time… Not only that, most of those building blocks are handmade with paint, crayons, pencils… and an iPad because on has to stay within the limits of sanity.

So hopefully, you’ll enjoy it and, most importantly, the video helps the song shine as it should and more and more people discover this amazing artist who everybody in Spain calls El Maestro.