Kanye West's 2007 music video for "Good Morning" was directed by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. The project was a collaboration of two digital production companies, OLM Inc. and KaiKai Kiki Inc, both of which are Japanese animation studios. The video showcases the advanced animation, creativity, and originality that combined to produce such an amazing piece of work.
The video follows the animated bear version of Kanye West, the rap musician and producer, waking up in Universe City and making his way to his graduation ceremony, facing many obstacles on the way.
From the opening scene, the viewer is shown the high level of detail that is exerted into every frame of the animation. The 3D settings are intricately detailed to produce the futuristic city that the story takes place in. The opening scene has the text 'Welcome to Universe City' flash onto the background of the city. The text then dissolves away amid animated sparks and flashes that as any animator knows, is not done easily.
The main title fades into an establishing shot of the Kanye Bear's apartment building and then pans up to his window. The next shot sequence shows the Kanye bear's alarm clock going off, alerting the sleepy Kanye that he is late for his graduation. As the Kanye bear scrambles out of bed and down the hall to brush his teeth, the viewer sees the fluidity in the animation. The bear moves so naturally that the entire sequence feels seamless. The Kanye bear is animated running towards the viewer with the hallway ahead of him coming into perspective as he gets closer. This initial scene of the bear shows the advanced level of animation that the producers posses.
The story progresses with the bear Kanye dealing with a broken down car, missing buses and subway trains, being swept up by rain clouds, mistakenly getting involved in a football game with much bigger bears, and finally, arriving at his graduation to receive his diploma from the university of hip-hop. The animation through all these adventures is very impressive. The bear Kanye moves fluidly in every way, but the added animation given to his environment and the amount of detail to which it is done, is what adds the extra value to the video. So much detail is given to every part of the world that the bear Kanye is running through. The angles of which shots are framed are constantly switching, showing the bear Kanye from different shots and perspectives, never letting the video feel bland or boring. The environment is always bursting with color, movement, and changing in some way.
The animators are very adept at changing the structure of the narrative simply by presenting the story in alternative perspectives. The Kanye bear is never shot in a boring or simple way. Everything has an emphasis, whether its the color, the magnitude of detail, or the constantly changing camera angles. The artists express their own artistic creativity in the final end sequence that features the Kanye bear and his classmates fly through a spiral vortex of color in the Kanye bear's car. The scene transforms into an explosion of planets and stars against a universe background that has multiple moving parts and animations.
The video is animated beautifully by the OLM and KaiKai Kiki animators. Both studios obviously have incredibly talented artists to produce such amazing work, but even more so is the originality of the whole piece. Everything is built from scratch specifically for this video yet it is still easy to follow and entertaining to watch. Takashi Murakami is a renowned artist for many reasons and the vision he put into this video goes to show the wide array of his talents in both traditional art, and digital design as well.
