Conan’s barbaric bones

Fresh off the back of his Iron Maiden The Writing On The Wall promo, Livesey directs Paincantation, a stop-motion tale produced by Blinkink about a warrior skeleton summoned by high priests on a dying planet to harvest other planets' precious elements. 

It’s an epic promo created with 3D-printed characters and intricate set builds inspired by the work of Ray Harryhausen, the 1950s/60s artist, VF designer who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as Dynamation. 

The director comments: “The lyrics of the track initially inspired me and then I pushed the idea further into a sci-fi world and created the concept of these high priest skeletons.

"We went for detail over animation. Keep the movement simple and go full whack on the set builds, lighting and atmosphere. That way we could really create intricate environments, characters and props.

"Stop motion was the main technique we used, but there is a fair amount of live action in it too and we embellished the whole lot with 2D FX animation and a few CG elements in comp as well as real slime, macro slow motion lemonade, a hell of a lot of smoke and blood. 3D printing was used for the hero skeletons head, I wanted the main warrior to have a unique appearance in comparison to the other skeletons.

"Cutting a lot from fully live action shots to frame-by-frame stop motion shots we layered certain techniques from live action over to stop motion and vice versa to lead the eye through the change in techniques. Mad what you can get away with. It gives it this sort of 80’s horror vibe.”