Immersive Animation for Staging and Music Videos

“Old Friends” A Live Jam and Animation Art Experience & Experiment!

Bringing Music and Visuals Together: A Creative Journey

If you explore my website, you’ll quickly discover that creativity flows freely from our Savannah studio in every direction. My deep appreciation for both art and music inspires an ever-expanding range of projects — from original songs and hand-painted canvases to fine art photography, rotoscoping animation, and AI-driven storytelling. Which brings me to today’s post.

Inspiration from a Widespread Panic Show

Over the weekend, my wife and I caught Widespread Panic live here in Savannah at Enmarket Arena. The show was absolutely electric — the asymmetrical lighting design / staging and the projected visuals behind the band transformed the entire experience. Beyond the incredible jams, it was the immersive artwork that truly drew me in.

Widespread Panic covers The Who Halloween Night in Savannah GA

Crafting My Own Visuals for Music

For years, I’ve been creating similar visual work as a companion to my own music releases. My jam band recently recorded a live rehearsal, and I used that session to direct and produce the “Old Friends” music video above — it served as a creative experiment that merged AI animation with live music.

While AI offers a faster and more playful process than traditional rotoscoping, maintaining consistency in character and theme remains a challenge. Still, the learning curve was invaluable, requiring me to draw upon every aspect of my creative background.

The Process: From Studio to Screen

My Painting helped define the style of output.

The project began in my portrait studio, where I photographed each musician under controlled lighting. From there, I drew inspiration from one of my own paintings — a piece filled with iridescent blues, expressive lines, and a dynamic color palette.

Hundreds of takes later, I refined the visuals, compositing multiple AI outputs in Photoshop to gain better control over the final aesthetic. AI doesn’t usually do what you want it to. It’s random. But I've learned that you can gain some level of control if you take the time to master the image and concept first. It’s a trial and error process, and this one took 4 days of intense thought and effort to see it through. The completed animation was then slowed down in Final Cut Pro X using optical flow to create a dreamlike atmosphere enhanced by disco-style lighting effects.

Beyond the skeletons, rabbits, mushrooms, and flowers I feel that what makes this piece fascinating is that I crafted the actual band members into the animations keeping the characters and theme consistent throughout. This adds a level of personalization to the visuals, which for a stage audience would be captivating.

A Fusion of Art Forms

This project became a true fusion of disciplines — one part photographer, one part painter, one part musician and recording engineer, one part video editor, and one part AI visionary. The experience reminded me how much I love pushing creative boundaries, and why I always embrace new storytelling technologies early.

Going forward, I’m inspired to craft large-scale visuals not only for my own music but also for touring bands and stage productions.

Always Evolving

Art, after all, is a living thing — always evolving, always teaching. And the joy is in the journey of learning, creating, and sharing that energy with others.