Our Picks: Disappear by Lilium

A young boy is led through the depths of his subconscious by a red balloon, causing him to re-evaluate his perceptions and break through personal boundaries. Music video directed by Lilium and animated by Ajmal Areeb Ishaq

Director’s Notes

‘Disappear’ was produced and directed by Lilium to accompany the release of our debut single, on Deathly Records.

We wanted to develop a narrative concept that resonated visually with the themes of the music, and to produce something that was closer to a short film than a music video. Above all we wanted it to be emotionally engaging, even if that meant deviating from the typical narrative conventions of modern music videos.

As the story follows an exploration of the subconscious, we were after a look that was surreal but with a minimalist charm, while also providing a level of kineticism that mirrored the sprawling and expansive universe. This led us to a more traditional hand drawn, sketch-book animation style.

We drew inspiration from a lot of Japanese anime, including the work of Satoshi Kon and Mamoru Hosoda, with emotional and story influences also coming from Pixar. Many live action influences played a part as we wanted to blend traditional techniques with some more elaborate camera moves.

Animator Ajmal Areeb Ishaq used Toon Boom and then edited in Adobe Premier, cutting directly to several musical cues that were decided upon during the storyboarding phase. Each frame was designed and hand drawn precisely across the course of the production.