Honne Brings Animated Creatures Alive in Touching Music Video

To coincide with the release of their new single ‘no song without you’, Honne and Atlantic Records UK have released an accompanying animated video created by celebrated illustrator Holly Warburton. The animation that plays over the tender and heartfelt song is a story of love, kindness and light in a town of isolation and darkness – a metaphor for the Covid-19 lockdown situation the world is currently facing.

Imagined, developed and completed during the lockdown, the project was led by Atlantic Records UK’s creative director Luke Tipping and the video was commissioned by director of video Dan Curwin. They brought in Holly Warburton to create the animation after they became aware the band were fans of her work.

Warburton produced the animation digitally using a frame-by frame technique in Photoshop, redrawing the characters for every move they make. She would start by drawing the backgrounds to set the stage, followed by the linework for the characters and finally filling the linework with colour. The amount of character movement involved in this piece meant that at times it could take up to three days to produce five seconds of animation. Warburton worked closely with the song, creating audio files that allowed her to listen to the track while she animated which was crucial in helping the video complement and emphasise ‘no song without you’.

Luke Tipping says: “Because of lockdown we expected animation videos to be in renaissance. But we knew that, no matter what everybody else produced, what would set our work apart was story. So we invested a lot of time up front in that part of the process.”

Holly Warburton adds: “Honne and the team at Atlantic have been great to work with, a major reason being that they trusted me with a lot of creative freedom for this project. It was really valuable to be able to discuss ideas with them at every point in the process, from sketches and storyboards to giving the characters a life on-screen. There is a real sense of heartfelt warmth and optimism in this song, and I hope that sentiment carries through the animated story. I have listened to 'no song without you' hundreds of times during the making of this video, but I still enjoy it as much as the first time hearing it.”

Dan Curwin concludes: “Creating videos at the moment can be really tricky but this project has been enjoyable right from the start. Watching Holly create such amazing art has been inspiring. Her work is incredible and it elevates, what was already a brilliant song, into a really uplifting distraction.”

‘no song without you’ is Honne’s first new material since the release of their acclaimed 2018 album, ‘Love Me / Love Me Not’.