A couple of months ago, underground rap juggernaut Zotiyac teamed up with fellow producer Eevee to bring us “LOCKDOWN”, a trap banger full of aggression and braggadocio. The latter reached out to me to create some visual collateral for the release of this single. This involved editing and animating the cover art for the single, which was created by Kikoknees.

The editing process was not as straightforward as I expected. When preparing the cover art of the song for animation, I realized that the thin contours of the characters on the image made the selection and separation of them very difficult. However, like any challenge I’ve faced while editing other commissions, I separated the characters from the background and brought them into After Effects. Afterwards, the animation portion of the commission gave me the opportunity to experiment with hair movement and wiggle expressions on puppet pins, leading to some satisfying floating hair animation.

Overall, this was a worthwhile entry to my portfolio and a great opportunity to work with two very talented aritsts in the underground hip-hop scene.

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