In August 2021, I animated this Canvas for Angelo Mota’s single, Do Not Disturb. This was my first fully hand-drawn animation, and Angelo loved it so much he insisted on paying me a generous commission.

I wanted to take advantage of the eight-second loop that Spotify Canvases play on, and so this hand-drawn animation was a great way to push both my creativity and technical skills. I used a variety of brushes on Procreate to create a textured animation, and then took the resulting video file to After Effects. There, I played around the blending modes, eventually deciding to invert the colors of the piece (see the original draft below). I then added a faint kaleidoscope effect to give the background some depth.

The final piece reflects the song’s melancholy and soulful feel, which is exactly what I was going for when starting this piece. Do Not Disturb has over four million streams on Spotify, and you can watch the Canvas and listen to the song here.