Animated Music Video. This is a music video from a fairly obscure (to me at least) artist, English folk musician Matt Elliott. A fine singer and all that, I'm sure he has a lot of fans and I don't mean to be flip about it, but I'm presenting this clip to you because of the animation from Marina Sabio that accompanies the song in this music video, "Reap What You Sow." Matt will have plenty of folks to review his work, this is intended to give you some exposure to the animator behind the scenes.

This is a beautiful stop motion animation. My sources tell me that Marina was born in Barcelona, Spain and now resides in Nancy, France. She and Elliott are now a team, where he makes the music (which is quite good) and she makes the animation. Her work, what I have seen of it anyway, has a dark, gothic feel to it that is reminiscent of some of the work of Tim Burton ("The Nightmare Before Christmas") and his colleague Henry Selick ("Coraline").

Marina's studio is called Tiny Lost Soul. If you like her work you should visit her website.


This style is not for everyone, to be sure. You must have a certain sensitivity and grace to appreciate products like this. It is not "commercial" in the sense that a lot of people are going to "get" it or make the time to try. But if you do, it's wonderful and shows how lucky we are that there are creative people like Sabio and Elliott in the world to provide a little variety to the creators of mass culture.

The final product makes it look easy. Putting together an entire fantasy world of latex and clay figures, full of little details and significant gestures, and making it all look seamless and lifelike is quite an undertaking. And then, when you're done, a few thousand people might see it if it's really good, and then it's lost and forgotten.

One of my great pleasures from doing this blog is exploring the world of animation myself and finding golden nuggets like this video which, if I didn't hunt it down, I would never even know existed.


From the Youtube page:

Videoclip by Marina Sabio
[Tiny Lost Soul stop motion animation studio]
Music and lyrics by Matt Elliott.
Extract from the album
Only Myocardial Infarction Can Break Your Heart.
Label : Ici d'ailleurs (2013)
Album available on CD/LP/DL

Marina Sabio at work - that's how it's done, folks.

2020