Soshiki Hakase directs super cute music video that brings household objects to life

Soshiki Hakase has directed a music video for Japanese singer/songwriter YeYe with his animation studio Furifurisoshiki, creating a fantastical pastel-coloured world full of cute animals and animated objects. YeYe collaborated with sock designer Etchira Otchira on the track’s release, selling socks along with CDs, so Soshiki was brought in to create a video that celebrated the song and featured Etchira’s socks.

“When listening to the song I thought I heard the cry of an animal in some places, and it reminded me of a melody you’d hear in the morning,” explains the director. “Together with the sounds of the morning and the animal calls, I tried to make a story portraying an oasis.” The world Soshiki has imagined is full of bright, happy colours where household objects come to life and sing with the protagonist, including a plastic dryer with socks pegged to it to form legs, a giraffe-like creature with a hairbrush for a head and a pair of toothbrush and toothpaste woodland animals.

The personification of these inanimate objects is subtly done with considered movements and expressions of the characters, like slow blinking eyes and little legs walking, bringing Soshiki’s kaleidoscopic landscape to life. The animation is surreal but endearing and Soshiki has used digital techniques to create the animation with illustrated elements, creating a collage feel to the film where characters appear as both 2D and 3D.