Pitch

For my application to the Toronto Animated Image Society's (TAIS) Digital Artist in Residency program, I developed a proposal to create an animated film about "brain rot". In this pitch, I developed a moodboard and concept sketches, focusing on a character who is attempting to heal themselves of the "brain rot" disease.

I was accepted into the 3-week Digital Animator in Residence program, and was hosted at the TAIS Studio during July 2025.

Later on in the process, I decided to turn this project into a music video. While I kept the initial imagery and symbolism of the original pitch, the project ended up moving into a new direction, to place more focus on the musician (Kitty Ray).

Storyboards

I prefer to kick-off my projects with traditional sketches, often using cheap materials such as washable crayola markers and colored pencils. This helps me iterate through ideas quickly, and visualizes the emotional energy that I need to capture.

This is especially effective for beatboards, where ideas often emerge spontanously, and need to be drawn out quickly to keep up with the mind. Because I was limited to 3-weeks for this project, I didn't create a cleaned up animatic, opting to jump straight into the animated production.

This process brings me into a state of child-like play. Without any technical details to fuss over, can I allow the first steps of my process to be free-flowing and removed from self-critisism.

3D Production

Jewelry

I took immense pleasure designing "medival cyber-punk" jewelry for Kitty's character. It was a practice in designing accesories that I wished existed in real life, and existed in my closet!

Some of the bracelets were inspired by my friend Raff's collection. He is always decked out in silver chains across his entire outfit, and I was inspired make that maximalism apart of Kitty's animated character.

VR sculpting

Much of the jewelry, along with all the "brain sculptures" were created using VR sculpting, in the free software Adobe Medium. This process gives me the freedom to make organic, intuitive shapes, without being obstructed by a software interface.

Blender geometry nodes

With the help of youtube tutorials and the advanced geometry node pack KS ExtraNodes, I was able to re-create my glorpy 3D brain aesthetic into moving shapes.

Including process footage

Because this was a small indie project with a timespan of 3-weeks, I was not able to animate an entire 3-minute video. Initially, I included process footage into the final music video as a solution to fill the time, but it quickly became an endearing aspect of the music video's identity.

The audience can join me on the creative journey of making this animated artwork, and glimpse into the effort involved to bring it to life. While I am still undecided on my opinion on the impact of AI art and the role it plays in our current zeitgeist, it nonetheless feels satisfying to prove that no AI was used in the creation of this animated music video.

Marketing

I created a series of short reel teasers to build hype for the release of the music video. In addition, I made a spotify canvas (the 8-second video clip that plays alongside a streaming song in spotify), and three options for the cover-art.