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Céline Desrumaux: Countdown

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Countdown is a short movie/music video based on the music of Apparat. Directed, designed, animated and composed by Céline Desrumaux.

Editor’s note: Countdown was originally posted as a Quickie, but it has been upgraded to a full post.

Posted on 13 September 2011 |

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18 thoughts on “Céline Desrumaux: Countdown”

  2. The best thing I’ve seen on this website in a long time in my opinion. Gorgeous work. 

    Is there any 3d in this? Also how did you go about making it look time lapse on the hero shot in the thumbnail?

  6. Just amazing! It’s become a cliché for people to say how music videos aren’t what they were. And certainly the early 2000s Shynola hey day departed with the plummeting music promo budgets. So I think nowadays, to create something truly brilliant it has to be a labour of love, which this promo undeniably is. 2 years in the making and from the results it was undeniably worth it. Congratulations.

  14. Theres nothing in this piece that I don’t love. The design and animation are fantastic, space and space travel is something I’m very interested in and after watching this, I had to go buy that album from Apparat. 

    Awesome work

  15. Thank you everybody!
    It’s really motivating to hear such comments!

    For people who are interested in the technic part :
    Most of the video was done in 2D.
    I drew in photoshop and animate everything in after effects. For the timelapse sequence i use a bit of 3D. I did the modeling of the rocket and the launch pad (as i drew it in photoshop), i lighted it and get the shadow pass. Then i came back to after effects, used my 2d background and the 3d shadow pass on it. I’ve also use the 3d for some shot of the rocket, in order to give some volume or make the rocket turn on itself. I did a camera mapping of my illustration on the rocket to keep the illustration look.
    For the animation character, it’s 2d flash animation.
    And finally, all the particles for fire and smoke have been done with particular :) (from the beginning i wanted to have graphic circles for the smoke)

    The most difficult part over those two years, was to keep the minimalistic and illustrative look i had at the beginning.
    I really took it as an exercice to focus on  colours, composition of the image and also to make the image dynamic even if it’s just an illustration. We can always find a way to make it alive!
    And it was such a pleasur to work on this music, i really thank apparat for letting me use the music !

  16. I love this! Great stuff. Hope we get to see the sequel of them landing on Mars.

    I shared the link on my Facebook page – hope you get lots of attention, you deserve it.