Mustashrik

During a nomadic childhood spent traversing England and Scotland, there was always one thing that Mustashrik could rely on when everything else changed – drawing.

“Moving around a lot as a child, I didn’t really have things,” recalls the now London-based graphic designer and filmmaker. “My first ‘toy’ was a red crayon, so I guess my thanks goes to Crayola.

Then came the animations, and everything began to make sense. I lapped it all up with every bowl of milk and cereal in the morning, raced to school thinking I was a Looney Toon, and then rushed back to catch other cartoon adventures. I was absorbing it all.”

Spurred on by his boyhood love and the encouragement of mentors, Mustashrik pursued an education in the arts and got a degree in graphic design. In his second year at university he completed his first job as a designer, a visual branding project for The British Fashion Council for London Fashion Week.

But the real turning point came with his first graphic novel commission, for an adaption of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, for which he had full creative freedom to design everything from the costumes to the characters.

“From there, I just carried on, multi-tasking on various design and illustration projects, collaborating at production companies and agencies, doing character designs, storyboards and art direction. I’ve always seen myself being a director of fi lm and animation,” he explains. “But I wanted to develop my design skills and understanding fi rst and foremost.”

Mustashrik’s fast-paced video, showcased here, for the Punks Jump Up track Blockhead, reflects perfectly the rising adrenalin of the music. With fast cuts and multiple split screens, the black and white film blends the full works – live-action, 2D animation, motion graphics, typography and 3D.

“The video is a super low-budget throwback to the rapid nature of early MTV idents, the mayhem of that hallucinogenic generation, and to the ‘information overload’ culture of today,” says the director.

“Multi-tasking like crazy is something everyone does now, we have various screens open, video playing in the corner, script being written and the internet open in a tab behind. I think the trick here was combining the multiple palette of information into one cohesive video, as it’s easy to get live-action and animation videos wrong.”

Produced through Partizan Lab, who Mustashrik is signed to, the Punks Jump Up promo reflects the director’s multiple design talents – all borne out of his love for animation:

“Animation is truly an amazing thing,” concludes the director, “and when done right, you can really see and feel the creator’s soul, their spirit. I think the magic of it all lies in the idea that you really do create everything from scratch, a blank, and what happens is that it’s your mind that fills the blank – hence the soul.”