Over my winter break in sophomore year, I taught myself the basics of Blender. I wanted to put my skills to use in a Canvas, so I made a short animation of a humanoid-devil character suspended in an abstract scene. This Canvas was not made for a specific song, as per my usual creative process, so I spent some time thumbing through Spotify singles that I felt matched the energy of the animation.

To make this piece, I first grabbed a human figure off of Thingiverse to play with. I rigged and sculpted the character to my desired position and look, and then added two sphere meshes for eyes. I set the material of the body to a shiny, dark color, and the eyes were set to a glowing white. The background was generated from two orange planes, an animated area light, and multiple pink spheres with keyframed displacement modifiers. I imported the resulting eight-second animation into After Effects, where I enhanced the colors and added a slight CRT effect.

Once I finished the animation, I sent it to Reed Shannon for his single, Bad Girl. I really loved grungy, electronic synth used in the instrumental, and the song’s theme reflected the visual: spicy love, toxicity, and a little bit of manipulation.

Edit: The Canvas was live on Reed’s Spotify page until a few years ago, when he uploaded a remastered version of the song and the Canvas was not restored.