How RUFFMERCY brought inhalation to his animation

Can you tell us about the initial concept for the Breather video?

Jesse Rogg from the label StrataSonic sent through a well-thought-out brief for the video to get me started. It stipulated that they wanted it to be centred around a dance performance influenced, in some way, by the act of breathing. 

If you listen closely to the track, there’s a layer of breathing woven deep within the music. It takes a minute to hear, but once you do, it becomes one of those 'once you hear it, you can’t unhear it' moments. 

I wanted to visualise a breath-like entity that would move between the dancers, breathing life into them and manipulating their movements.

The track has an otherworldly feel that I wanted to enhance by manipulating the dancers’ forms to feel alien, while still setting their performance in a real-world location. I also knew I wanted to visualise a breath-like entity that would move between the dancers, breathing life into them and manipulating their movements.

How do you feel the visuals complement the music?

At first, the track seems quite sparse, yet there’s a lot going on rhythmically. I feel the dark environment reflects the overall mood of the beat, while the colourful dancers and other textures represent the warmer sounds weaving between the beats.

Can you talk us through the rotoscoping of the live-action shoot and the hand-drawn cell animation?

With the video being fairly long, I always knew the rotoscoping part would take some time. Rotoscoping can be quite challenging, but I generally like it when it’s done a little roughly, which helps speed things up. We had to rotoscope several layers – head, legs, hands – on every frame, which meant a lot of frames. 

RUFFMERCY wanted to express the track's otherworldly feel by manipulating the dancers’ forms to feel alien.

We used the rotoscoping tool in After Effects and, when that got monotonous, switched to hand-drawn mattes in Photoshop. Annoyingly, some shots worked better in After Effects while others didn’t, so it was a case of going back and forth throughout the process.

The basic concept was that their movements should be centred around breathing and feeling possessed by a breath-like entity moving through their bodies.

We also set up a Photoshop action to cut out the central figure in each frame and let it run. I expected mistakes, but I had a feeling those mistakes would bring an energy I’d like. This technique worked well as a base layer for the figures. 

The hand-drawn cell animation, which involved drawing the breathing entity, was also done in Photoshop. Surprisingly, this was quicker than the rotoscoping. Once I got into the flow, it could be done fairly quickly.

The film's many textures are the result of techniqes such as painting on Super 8 film and scribbling on Photoshop.

What film and media did you use to create the many different textures? 

We shot the location and the dancers’ performance on a Sony A7S III. The colourful textures are a combination of digitally drawn patterns and scribbles made in Photoshop, along with hand-painted Super 8 film. I love the texture of film, especially painted film.

Did you have a choreographer, or did the dancers just do their own thing? 

The video came together quickly, so there wasn’t time to work with a choreographer. I briefed the dancers, Poppy [Chandler] and Posi [Olamiposi Ayorinde], on the overall feel of the movement. The basic concept was that their movements should be centred around breathing and feeling possessed by a breath-like entity moving through their bodies.

Both dancers brought a lot of ideas and energy to the project.

Poppy is a professional dancer, but Posi comes from a background in parkour, and I thought his input would bring something unique to the video. Since they’re friends, I knew they would work well together and create some interesting movements on the day of the shoot. Luckily for me, both brought a lot of ideas and energy to the project.