While most people are focused on what Sam Smith's outfit for balloon funerals, we at Guru By Bangkok Post are focusing on his latest avant-garde music video.
Multi-platinum, Grammy, Brit, Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning artist/songwriter (have we left out any?) Smith has made use of Moldavian-Romanian illustrator and animator Loreta Isac's skills to create a lyrical video of the song "Lose You" from their fourth album "Gloria". Hold your horses, that ain't it!
The entire lyrical video has been created by Isac using Apple’s six generation iPad Pro, released last year, and illustration app Procreate. "Gloria" builds on the success of their critically-acclaimed 2020 predecessor, “Love Goes” and is Smith’s most confident and creatively-fulfilled version of themselves to date. Their courageous spirit overflows throughout the album, expressive and exuberant in equal measure. The juxtaposition of religion and sexual liberation within "Gloria" feels like a second coming of age, as they step into their truth.
The euphoric, electro-pop “Lose You", written for a lesbian friend going through her first break-up, provides what Smith describes as “my Kylie meets George Michael meets Abba moment”. Having trouble picturing it? You don’t have to, watch Isac illustrate it beautifully here: youtube.com/watch?v=gAwwdqAOcIA.
Isac specialises in conceptual and coloured, freestyle illustration and animation, which serves as a creative medium that allows her to break out of the classic pattern of telling a story. She started using the iPad in 2017 and appreciates how easy and fluid everything is, especially in Procreate. Her everyday workflow starts with a sketch that she usually takes a photo with on iPad and then brings into Procreate — where she adds colours and explores animation.
Isac interprets Smith’s tale of heartbreak in the lyrics. “For the Sam Smith 'Lose You’ lyric video, I used the iPad Pro and Procreate — starting with sketching, documenting, listening to the music, colouring the illustrations and animating them. I was really in love with the imagination part of creating the lyric video, as it allowed me to feel the poetry of the song and then translate it into unexpected visual emotions and animation.” For more of her work, visit loretaisac.com.
Smith’s “Lose You” is the latest video created as part of the “Made On iPad” series, which pairs artists with illustrators, who use the iPad combined with Apple Pencil to transform the lyric video — highlighting the emotion and meaning of the lyrics, which reinforces the creative power of the new iPad Pro. Previous artists in the iPad series include Zedd and Maren Morris, whose video for “Made You Say” was created with rotoscope animation (a method of drawing over live-action film) done entirely on an iPad. Visit procreate.com or apple.com.
