The hand-drawn video for Meridian Brothers’ new single Doctor Trompeta is an aptly surreal journey into fantasy, psychedelia and Eighties gaming. Here its creators, Alpaca Animations, share five of their inspirations.
Bogota-based band Meridian Brothers approached us with the idea to do an animation that would look like a video game, using exclusively hand-drawn images. An important element for Eblis Alvarez (the musician behind Meridian Brothers) was to get the Doctor Trompeta character right. He’s a man living completely in his own fantasy and imagination, but still approaching the obstacles he encounters more or less rationally. Eblis wanted Trompeta to walk around in a really basic three-dimensional world, doing things that would seem very strange to most of us. Hoping for the best, we disregarded his request and actually decided to go for a two-dimensional space, simply for the reason that we felt a cut-out animation would suit the song well due to the 'clumsy' and jerky feel of both the music and this technique. Thankfully he liked it.
