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Animated Music Video - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Jan 13 2008

Animated Music Video (trope)

This one is very nearly Self-Explanatory: a surprising number of musicians have managed to see past the Animation Age Ghetto, and released music videos composed mostly or entirely of animation. This can include any animation style: traditional cel animation, CGI, stop-motion, etc.

In the case of videos that are entirely animated rather than just having an animated segment, you'll notice they require no direct involvement of the artists themselves. These videos are a great way to put out content when the band is on tour, on hiatus, in the process of breaking up, or if a solo artist/member of the band passed away before filming a proper video.

Non-professional works should be filed under Fan Vid or Machinima.

Examples:

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Alternative 

  • Alice in Chains:
    • The video for "I Stay Away" is made with clay figures to make a disturbing stop-motion video.
    • The video for "Lesson Learned" video is an interesting variation: the whole video is live-action, but is composed of 6,000 still images stitched together to make a video.
  • Arctic Monkeys' "Do I Wanna Know?". Very mildly NSFW.
  • Asian Kung-Fu Generation's "Atarashii Sekai".
  • BIGMAMA's "Crystal Clear," a bittersweet animated video about a girl and her cat animated by Rapparu.
  • Björk loves concept videos. One of them is "I Miss You", a sexually comedic psychedelic cel-animated number from John Kricfalusi and Spumco of Ren & Stimpy and The Ripping Friends infamy. Kricfalusi additionally sneaks in a cameo from George Liquor, a recurring character in his work.
  • Blockhead's "The Music Scene" is a psychedelic animation with cyberpunk undertones by Anthony Schepperd.
  • Bloc Party's "Pioneers" and "One Month Off" have flash animated and stop-motion animated videos, respectively. "Ratchet" also has an official video animated by Cyriak, recycling and manipulating footage of their previous live-action videos into... pure chaos.
  • Cage the Elephant's "Aberdeen" is a claymation tale of a kaiju trying to make friends with people in a city.
  • The video for Cake's "Sheep Go To Heaven".
  • Coldplay's "Strawberry Swing", which is animated in stop-motion with Chris Martin lying on a pavement floor against chalk-drawn backgrounds.
  • The Cranberries' music videos for All Over Now and Wake Me When It's Over.
  • The video for "Bullets" by Creed was rendered in CGI.
  • Driftless Pony Club's music video for "House of 1982, Built Like a Ship".
  • The video for Fall Out Boy's "The Carpal Tunnel Of Love", starring none other than the Happy Tree Friends (and features HTF versions of the band members as well).
  • The Flobots music video for "Handlebars" is also entirely cel-shaded CGI.
  • Foster the People's "Pseudologia Fantastica" had a particularly surreally colored and surreally symbolic animated video.
  • Gorillaz are an animated band that are fronted by a group of four animated characters who are 2D (Vocals and Keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (Bass Guitar), Russel Hussel Hobbs (Drums/Percussion) and Noodle (Lead Guitar), and due to this, all of the band's music videos are animated.
    • Keep in mind that just because they're animated doesn't mean they're appropriate for kids, and Gorillaz one of the more obvious examples of "What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?".
  • Imagine Dragons has an animated video for "Warriors", created to promote League of Legends.
  • Judah & The Lion's "Why Did You Run?" mainly takes place in a CGI classroom, while the female protagonist's drawings and the band members are rotoscoped, likely in homage to "Take on Me".
  • "Shoot The Runner" by Kasabian is a rotoscoped Performance Video with some paint splatters thrown in. It sounds simple, but it's the eye-candiest thing this side of an iPod commercial.
  • Kelela:
  • Beastie Boys' "Shadrach" is a series of rotoscoped pastel drawings based on specially-shot live footage.
  • How could we forget the video for "Take On Me" by a-ha? Half-rotoscoped and half-live-action, it's about a woman who gets sucked into a comic book and falls in love with the protagonist, eventually bringing him out into the real world.
  • Lemon Jelly's trippy Nice Weather for Ducks.
  • My Brightest Diamond's "Inside a Boy" depicts a girl rescuing her boyfriend from a dungeon and slaying monsters along the way.
  • Necronomidol's "SKULLS IN THE STARS": a video made to look like a Famicom-esque game featuring 5 color-coded Japanese idols against eldritch abominations in a setting inspired by HP Lovecraft's works. Cool, huh?
  • Octafonic Rain 2D animated video directed by Emo Enriquez (www.emoenriquez.com).
  • The Pillows' "Wake Up Dodo". Be warned that the song may never leave your head.
    • Also: "1989", "Go! Go! Jupiter", "Instant Music", "Your Order" and (partially) "Comic Sonic".
  • Prozzak were a canadian pop duo whose members consisted of the animated characters Simon and Milo, so because of that, all of their music videos are animated.
  • Radiohead has the videos for "Paranoid Android," "Pyramid Song," "Go to Sleep," "There There" (partially), "Burn the Witch" (claymation), and a lot of ''Kid A'''s "blips." "Paranoid Android" doubles as a minisode of the Swedish-American TV series Robin, with Radiohead commissioning the show's creator out of admiration for the series.
  • Monarchy of Roses by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with animation inspired by the art of Raymond Pettibon: collaborator and brother to Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn.
  • The Presidents Of The USA song "Ladybug", which uses shadow puppetry to depict a super-heroine ladybug rescuing her boyfriend from an evil centipede.
  • Shiny Toy Guns has their Ghost Town video.
  • The Strokes: The "At The Door" video features a series of roughly interlinking stories that are presented in 80s styled animation.
  • The videos for Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend" and "I've Been Waiting" used clips from Space Adventure Cobra and Urusei Yatsura, respectively.
  • "Shiva" ("Шива") (NSFW) by the Russian alt-rock group Total, is done in the anime style, based off of Kite (1998).
  • They Might Be Giants have done quite a few of these. "(She Was A) Hotel Detective"note , "Experimental Film" (done by Strong Sad and The Cheat), "Bastard Wants to Hit Me", "I'm Impressed", and "The Mesopotamians", to name a few. In fact, the majority of their music videos in the latter half of the Oughties were animated. Their kids' albums No! and Here Come the ABCs feature a selection of Flash videos for several of the songs on the CD, accessible via computer.
    • Let's not forget two of their songs appeared in one of the two "music video" episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures.
  • Silverchair had to release the video for "Luv Your Life" in animation due to lead singer Daniel John's then-crippling arthritis.
  • The Unwritten Law music video for "Save Me" is entirely cel-shaded CGI
  • Voltaire essentially has one for his song "Brains!" in the form of the episode "Little Rock of Horrors" from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
  • The video for "Fell In Love with a Girl" by The White Stripes uses an interesting technique, with stop motion animation of a wall of Lego blocks.
  • Howard Jones' "You Know I Love You, Don't You?" follows in the footsteps of "Take on Me".
  • The Offspring's video for "Dividing By Zero/Slim Pickens Does The Right Thing And Rides The Bomb To Hell" features an animated narrative about a fighter pilot in a futuristic war.
  • The music video for Hollywood Undead’s Heart of a Champion remix has animated segments reminiscent of arcade fighting games.
  • Melvins' "Electric Flower" uses Stop Motion animation to depict the band as off-brand troll dolls performing in a living room to an audience of other kitschy vintage toys, dolls, and knick-knacks - making them trolls seems to be a nod to front man Buzz Osborne's trademark Wild Hair.
  • Melody's Echo Chamber has this "Desert Horse," "Cross My Heart," and "Breathe In, Breathe Out."

Classical 

Comedy 

  • Being a huge fan of animation, "Weird Al" Yankovic, had made several of these.
    • "Close but No Cigar" was done by John Kricfalusi, the same guy who made the video of Björk's "I Miss You."
    • "Virus Alert," "I'll Sue Ya" and "Party in the CIA" were all done in Adobe Flash, although with vastly different art styles.
    • "Weasel Stomping Day" was made by the Robot Chicken team as both a music video and a segment for the show.
    • The 10-minute-long "Trapped in the Drive-Thru" has an animated video which premiered on MySpace and is now on YouTube.
    • "Do I Creep You Out" uses JibJab's standard cutout animation method. "CNR" also did this, but mixed it up with live-action heads on animated bodies and vice versa.
    • "Jurassic Park" is claymation and was done by Craig Bartlett.
    • Nine of the twelve songs on Alpocalypse have animated music videos, the exceptions being the polka, "Craigslist" and "Perform This Way".
    • "Don't Download This Song" and "TMZ" feature videos animated by Bill Plympton.
    • "Whatever You Like" was made using Clip-Art Animation, courtesy of Cris Shapan.
    • The opening theme to The Weird Al Show includes three art shifts from hand-drawn to CGI to claymation.
  • Green Jellÿ's "Three Little Pigs", done in Claymation.
  • GemBoy's Flash-animated music video for "Giambel V" is an Affectionate Parody of anime openings and old-school giant robot anime, most notably Daitarn 3.

Country 

Dance 

  • Most early singles by E Rotic have animated music videos with explicit nudity, for example "Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex", "Fred Come to Bed", and "Willy Use a Billy... Boy".
  • "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior uses pixel art animation. "Take My Time" has crude hand-drawn animation done with markers (and was even animated by Junior himself).

Electronic 

Folk 

  • Fleet Foxes have three Stop Motion animated music videos so far, all viewable here, mostly courtesy of lead singer Robin Pecknold's animator brother Sean. They tend to be beautiful in a very trippy fashion.
  • Sonny & Cher had several cartoon segments based on their recordings on their Variety Show, including one for "Dark Lady" and another for their cover of Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown"
  • The music video to "I Feel So Good" by Richard Thompson is animated (by Klasky-Csupo!) in the style of the cover art to the song's parent album, Rumor and Sigh.

Hard Rock 

Heavy Metal 

Indie 

Latin 

  • Lou Bega's "Just a Gigolo" video is partially animated.
  • A Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Double Feature consists of two separate Herb Alpert mariachi songs (including the notorious "Spanish Flea" set to music).
  • Bad Bunny's video for "Te Deseo Lo Mejor" takes place in Springfield, with BB singing as "Homero" laments Marge leaving him. Fortunately, they get back together at a Bad Bunny concert.
  • In 1934, New Zealand artist and animator Len Lye created an experimental Stop Motion animated video for Red Nichols' English-language cover of "El manisero" ("The Peanut Vendor"), featuring a monkey puppet dancing to the song, at one point detaching its tail to use as a prop.

Other 

  • Tiny Toon Adventures gave a whole bunch of songs animated music videos for two special episodes, including two songs from the ever-popular-on-TVTropes Wiki They Might Be Giants.

    "...who are these guys?"

  • The Pixar Short short Boundin', which ran as a sub-feature for The Incredibles. Of course, since the song was written for the film, it might be more appropriate to label it a "short animated musical comedy". Followed by Lava, the subfeature for Inside Out.
  • All of Dethklok's videos are animated (some are even seen in the show).
  • A large majority of Vocaloid songs have a PV (Promotional Video) made for them, and a lot of which are fan made.
  • During the mid-to-late Eighties, Disney made numerous videos for songs and ran them between shows under the title 'DTV', named after another music channel.
  • The "Don't Walk Away" segment in Xanadu, created by Don Bluth's team as one of the first non-Disney projects.
  • "Love is All", an animated video for one of the songs from Roger Glover's Concept Album based on The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast by Alan Aldridge and William Plover, featuring the characters from the book closely modelled on Aldridge's illustrations.
  • This one is Older Than They Think. It was a common thing during The Golden Age of Animation to make an animated short that featured (and in many cases, was named after) a popular song of the timenote ; too many examples to mention here.
  • "Cartoons and Vodka" by Jinkx Monsoon (of RuPaul's Drag Race fame) is one big love letter to popular cartoons past and present.
  • The Love Live! franchise started out as a series of these, which were accompanied by short stories in Dengeki Gs magazine that fleshed out the characters' backgrounds. The franchise has expanded into other mediums since then, but music videos are still made when singles are released.
  • Cartoon Network Groovies are music videos constructed this way. "El Kabong Rides Again", "Jabberjaw", and "My Best Friend Plank" are some examples.
  • Teamfight Tactics' “Remix Rumble (ft Steve Aoki)”, created for the music-themed Remix Rumble setnote , acts as both a trailer for the set and as one of these. The song itself is a spin on the “the background music style changes based on what bands your team fields” gimmick Remix Rumble features, switching between hip-hop, metal, classical, jazz, and electronic mix takes on the Teamfight Tactics theme as different in-game musicians take the spotlight.
  • In 1987, when Nina Simone's 1957 version of "My Baby Just Cares For Me" entered the UK charts due to being in an advert, Aardman Animations created a claymation video representing Simone, the band, and "Baby" as Funny Animal cats.

Pop 

  • ABC's video for "(How to Be A) Millionaire" stars cartoon versions of bandmembers Martin Fry and Mark White, and makes use of animation's capabilities through fantastical sequences of people/things changing size and Animate Inanimate Objects.
  • A Ha's "Take On Me", "The Sun Always Shines On TV", and "Train Of Thought."
  • AJ Rafael and Chance Calloway released an animated love story for their version of "I Know Him So Well," taking advantage of the medium to include a Greek Chorus of sexy mermen.
  • The Alan Parsons Project did an animated video for "Don't Answer Me".
  • BLACKPINK has "Ready for Love" and "The Girls". The former is a collaboration with the PUBG Mobile game. The latter is a for a tie-in song for the group's tie-in game Blackpink: The Game.
  • Britney Spears' "Break the Ice", done in an anime style.
    • As well as "Kill the Lights".
  • Chage and Aska's "On Your Mark", directed by none other than Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli fame, featured two policemen chasing after a girl with wings, among other things.
  • The official music video to Cher's "Dark Lady" is live action, but there is an alternate animated version from the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
  • Christina Grimmie's posthumously-released "Invisible" was given a fitting Anime tribute.
  • Dua Lipa's video for "Hallucinate".
  • Elton John's video for "Club at the End of the Street". This was caused by Executive Meddling: the company wanted a video, but Elton was busy visiting famous AIDS patient Ryan White in hospital, whose death prompted him to start the Elton John AIDS Foundation. So the company made an animated video instead.
    • The video for "Somewhere Out Out The Blue" from the soundtrack to The Road to El Dorado features an animated Elton.
  • "Happy Hour" by The Housemartins has a Claymation video.
  • The music video for "Baby's Coming Back" by Jellyfish was animated by Hanna-Barbera, with the band themselves briefly being animated before they become live-action.
  • Kids in America by LEN
  • "Music" by Madonna, the dancing scene in the middle uses an animated version of her because she was pregnant at the time.
  • The video for The Monkees' "You Bring the Summer" was animated by necessity because by the time the song was released Davy Jones had passed away.
  • The video for Meg Myers' version of "Running Up That Hill" consists of rotoscoped coloring book pages, each colored in with crayons by elementary school students.
  • Michael Jackson had two that come to mind both which were featured in the movie Moonwalker (though also as separate mainstream videos). "Leave me Alone" which blended live action and stop-motion. Similarly the second video feature Mike dancing on the roadside with a bunny name Spike.
  • Mick Jagger's video for "Hard Woman mixes a live-action Mick with CGI animation.
  • Paula Abdul did her video for "Opposites Attract" alongside the animated MC Skat Kat.
  • Pet Shop Boys' videos from the Very album are all predominantly CGI, but "Liberation" is entirely computer-animated (and like the other videos from the album, has nothing to do with the meaning of the song). And the more recent "Love etc." was done entirely in Flash over the span of two weeks.
  • The Police's video for the 1986 version of "Don't Stand So Close To Me" copiously uses CGI animation to create a variety of abstract setpieces, including bits of paraphernalia relevant to previous Police videos.
  • Rod Stewart's video for "Motown Song".
    • It's worth noting that this video has nearly the exact same style as the Elton John video listed before this, including reused character designs and early 90's digital editing techniques. Elton himself (or rather, his animated counterpart from his video for "Club") appears as well. Hey, at least he fares better than Michael Jackson...
  • The Spice Girls' "Viva Forever" features all five girls animated as CGI fairies. Note that we said "all five" — the video was released shortly after Geri Halliwell's departure from the band.
  • Sting's video for "Love Is The Seventh Wave" mixes live action and animation.
  • Tom Tom Club's videos for "Genius of Love" and "Pleasure Of Love".
  • Robbie Williams' "Let love be your energy", in which he looks like Buzz Lightyear.
  • The video for Tigerbombs' 1000 Sparks features an animated fox teaching people, ninjas, sumo wrestlers and penguins to dance.
  • A portion of Shakira's "Objection (Tango)"
  • The second half of Scissor Sisters video for "Mary" is an animated retelling of Rapunzel done by Don Bluth in his trademark style (bonus points for the being a nod to his "Don't Walk Away" segment in Xanadu).
  • t.A.T.u.'s Gomenasai. There's a better live action version, though.
  • Tom Jones' "Give A Little Love" video, pays homage to Fleischer Studios cartoons.
  • The video for "Harlem Shuffle" by The Rolling Stones has animated sections, created by Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi.
  • Pharrell Williams' music video for "It Girl" features a mixture of anime and sprite art with brief rotoscoped clips of Pharrell.
  • St.Olie's "I Will Burn" ("Я сгорю...") (partially in the original (interspersed with live-action clips) and fully in the alternate version (complete with the cameo appearance of the little girl from the previously-unfinished ''Sweeties'' (''Милыши'') pilot at the very end)) and "Caviar" ("Икра") (NSFW). The former was directed by Artur Tolstobrov, animated by Antimult and partially inspired by Fahrenheit 451 and Rammstein's "Benzin" music video, involving Ilona Stolie and her firefighter crew burning her mansion down after a break-up, while the latter was directed by Khariton Klimov.

Progressive Rock 

  • "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" by Peter Gabriel used Stop Motion; "Sledgehammer" mainly used pixellation (human puppetry), taking inspiration from a shot in the video for Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere", while "Big Time" relied mostly on claymation. his later "Steam" used CGI.
  • Pink Floyd typically featured pre-commissioned, rear-projected animations for their concerts, later repurposed for some of their music videos, like "Welcome To The Machine". Notably, the films for their tour of The Wall were repurposed for the album's film adaptation.
    • When it comes to solo albums, David Gilmour's video for "Rattle That Lock" depicts an animated video directed by Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney of Trunk Animation, which takes inspiration from the Paradise Lost poem about Lucifer's fall from the Kingdom of Heaven.
  • "The Big Money" by Rush (Band) takes place on a giant, computer-generated Monopoly-esque board.
    • In 2020, Rush released an animated video of "The Spirit Of Radio" to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Permanent Waves album. It also pays tribute to Neil Peart, who passed away shortly before its release.
  • The video for Grover Levy's "Part of Life" was done entirely in 2D animation.
  • The video for "Southbound Pachyderm" and "Lee Van Cleef" by Primus.
  • black midi's "Ducter" is trippy CG animation reminiscient of early computer rendering programs. "Welcome to Hell" and "Slow" are 2D animated in similar styles (though "Slow" is partly live-action).

Punk Rock 

Rap 

  • Eminem:
    • "Mosh", which is entirely Flash animated.
    • "Shake That" (feat. Nate Dogg).
  • Ghostface Killah's "Daytona 500" is basically a licensed Fan Vid of Speed Racer.
  • Whether it's his beats or his wardrobe, alternative rapper/producer Kanye West does well to keep his style as atypical as possible and naturally has come to rely on animation for a handful of his music videos.
  • Snoop Dogg released an animated version of the music video for "Vato" on his official website.
  • Tupac Shakur's "Do For Love" utilizes just about every style of animation you can think of, from Anime to Claymation.
  • The practice also suits underground rappers who manage to produce music videos. Prime examples are Madvillain's Silver Age comic book-style animated video for "ALL CAPS" and the morbid, 3-D world of "Monkey Suite"
  • Big Pun's "How We Roll" is a completely CGI video.
  • "Word Of Mouth" by John Reuben cast Reuben as a cel-shaded Corrupt Corporate Executive on a mission to destroy imagination and profit from conformity.
  • The video for the Rae and Christian remix version of the Dinah Washington cover of "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby". That is a convoluted sentence. Linky!
  • Killer Mike's "Reagan" uses red, white, blue and black animation to illustrate the song.
  • Master P's "Kenny Dead", which was recorded for South Park, features an animated Master P with the South Park cast in Las Vegas.
  • Childish Gambino's "Feels Like Summer" features an animated Gambino walking down a street while animated versions of popular rappers play in the yards he walks past.
  • Grupa Operacyjna: The music video for "Pomocy" is animated courtesy of GIT Production, likely because its subject material would have been too obscene or hard to show realistically.
  • Hoodie Allen's "Sushi" is officially a lyric video, but some words are visualized by the Fantastic Heat Brothers from "Golden Parachutes".
  • MF DOOM:
    • "All Caps", which is animated in the style of a Comic Book, with DOOM assuming his supervillain persona.
    • "One Beer", a surreal flash animation.

Rock 

Swing 

  • FAKE TYPE.: All of the band's music videos are animated, with the animation usually done by animation trio PPP.
  • "The Ghost of Stephen Foster" by the Squirrel Nut Zippers had an animated music video that paid Homage to black-and-white cartoons from the 1930s.