Jason Galea explains how he made King Gizzard's insane new music video

Whether he’s working as an illustrator, designer, director or in this case, animator, Jason Galea’s work always represents a band’s sound with a mix of personality and sophistication. His most recent work for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Robot Stop is an insane animatic music video. Hypnotic and captivating, it’s reminiscent of a time when you would gawp at the music channels on your parents’ TV. This is the third release in “a looping album of music videos” for each song featured on King Gizzard’s most recent album, Nonagon Infinity. We spoke to Jason about how on earth he created it.

You do a lot of illustration and video work but what started your interest in animation?

I’ve been creating animations in one form or another since I was ten years old. I had this computer program called Nickelodeon 3D Movie Maker which I’d use to create these 3D movies using models of Ren and Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life and Real Monsters. Eventually PaintShop Pro came along which had 2D animation features where I could wok frame-by-frame and not long after I discovered Macromedia Flash which was a bit more advanced. I ended up using Flash a lot more while studying multimedia at university, as well as the 3D program Lightwave.

Did you have any particular influences for Robot Stop?

This was a step out of my usual comfort zone towards a more robotic, futuristic world that felt necessary to dive into for the track, which was itself a big influence. I was also heavily drawn to Transformers: The Movie which I watched on repeat as a kid. Other influences while making it were HR Giger, Moontrap, Star Wars, Heavy Metal magazine and Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity album which I listened to a lot whilst working on it.

Could you give a description of the process used for Robot Stop?

I started by drawing out concept artworks of things I wanted to generally see and work towards, which took a few months while working on other projects. When the time came to get serious I made an animated storyboard which helped get the ideas down more and into the right sections of the song. Once the actual animating was underway I created all the models and camera movements in Cinema 4D, then exported to After Effects for compositing and further effects.

What other music videos or animations do you like?

I really liked Stone Quackers and Problem Solverz which came before that, they’re both really funny. Bruce Bickford’s work is top notch too, on a different kind of level though. As for music videos, Rydeen by Yellow Magic Orchestra is a current favourite but The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus from the Magical Mystery Tour is something I’m always going back to.