Cohort B — "Yee Yee"

I was already a Cohort B fan when I got to make the video for "Yee Yee." The band wanted something abstract, with effects piling up as the track progressed. I made the models, animation, lighting, compositing, and final edit in Blender.

Building up the image

I animated more than two minutes of footage to the track. Separate render passes let me layer hatching and halftone effects that responded to the lighting. I also added noise to the surface normals and baked the result into maps, giving the shading a rougher, painted texture.

Working in passes made it possible to adjust those effects together in compositing. The image could become more distorted as the music developed while retaining the underlying animation.

Working within the render time

A draft took about 20 hours to render when it worked. A failure could cost most of a day, so render time limited how often I could review the whole video.

I had to find effects that pushed the image far enough for the band and still let me finish on my computer. The result combines the animation and the layered treatment in the finished video above.