Stephen McNally teams up with Jon Hopkins to create a flowing animation for a song with no beat – It’s Nice That

Before this, Stephen and Jon had previously worked together in producing the album artwork and trailer for Singularity, his previous album. Describing Jon as a lovely, conscientious and very collaborative person to work with, when he approached Stephen with an initial edit of the track alongside Eileens watercolour artworks Stephen knew it was a project worth taking. The two work together harmoniously, and often, Stephen will approach the collab in the most open manner possible in response to the sensations the music creates. Yet equally, Eileens paintings were of similar importance when it came to animating the video. The handcrafted aesthetic of her paintings was an apt pairing to the psychedelic undertones of the track and finished film; theyre almost dripping in paint, bleeding from the splash of a brush and into the rest of the frame. It feels both small, physical and tactile, hand-crafted but with a sense of something vast and cosmic in scope within it, says Stephen. I was very keen to explore a shifting sense of scale, flowing from a scene that feels microscopic to something that feels like a vast cosmos fireworks exploding in impossibly slow-motion, schools of iridescent fish fluttering by.

To achieve a final outcome like this, of course takes time and skill. Or, as Stephen puts it, a mix of the physical and the technical. For instance, the opening sequence is composed using rostrum filmed elements of ink, expanding and soaking into wet watercolour paper, or flowing in pools and swirls. Then, as the music changes, the more computer-generated 3D world opens up. I created loosely sketched forms as three-dimensional structures to travel through, emitting motes of colour that advect through simulations of swirling fluid and smoke movement, he explains. The flow of colourful specks reflect the seeping of the watercolours in the earlier sections, but now moving in depth as well.

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Stephen McNally teams up with Jon Hopkins to create a flowing animation for a song with no beat - It's Nice That