The Art Department: Representing the Creative Process

In collaboration with Playgrounds and animation studio BUCK, Antfood's Amsterdam team set out to create a score for The Art Department‘s title film. The Art Department brings together artists, professionals and creative talent from the Netherlands, Germany and beyond to provide a platform for the latest developments in creative animation, visual effects, digital arts, film and games.

The Creative Journey

The Art Department titles represent the journey and process of a creative having an idea and going on to realise it. Putting their experiences as creatives into words, BUCK established a universal framework for this process, based around three pillars: Think & Wonder, Play & Explore, and Make & Make Better. These pillars are part of the same process, but they must be distinguishable from one another as different stages of the creative process. Vincent Lammers, ECD at BUCK Amsterdam, explains how these pillars apply to creative tasks: "First you think about it, wonder what it could be. It’s still liquid at this stage, soft, floating. Then if you hold onto a thought, it turns into something tactile, and you can start playing with it. Turn it on its head, and explore different shapes and colours. Once you choose a direction, you start making it, making it better and working on the details."

The pillars mirror Antfood’s own approach to creation, but through an audio lens. With each brief, we consider the avenues that might work for the project. Setting out on an exploratory journey, we push boundaries in different directions before coming together to assess what we have created. Once we identify the best avenue, we refine a score - making it better - until it is just right. A core part of our creative process is collaboration - we work as a team because we can make better work this way. Charley van Veldhoven, composer and sound designer at Antfood explains that this project was no different: "We worked with sounds created by all of our team members - it was super collaborative and the final result is something we're really proud of."

Creating the Journey

In the initial exploration phase for The Art Department, we had no visual cues. We had the freedom to create sounds that represent the stages of the creative process for Antfood. We worked from a list of keywords, themes, and colours - the same material BUCK used as a foundation for the graphic elements. Joe Brooks, animation director at BUCK explains that "Sound is such an integral part of our work - we wanted Antfood to work in a similar way to us, to enjoy it and tell the story of their process in the titles, too."

We explored the three pillars within one sound palette called The Zone - a magical place where you are extremely focussed, thriving and free in your creative space. The palette was made from a combination of organic and recorded sounds, real processed instruments and a lot of analog synths. An organic approach gave a playful feel to the sounds. The Zone is home to elements from all pillars - from dreamy pad synths (Pillar 1) to quirky funny vocal edits (Pillar 2). Over time, we created a score that merged these sounds - a refined and finished product for the festival (Pillar 3). Integrating these loops, elements, gestures and sounds into BUCK’s visual objects, added another layer of meaning to the animations, as well as another perspective on the creative process.

Making the Journey

We were thrilled by the reception of the brand package by both the team at Playgrounds and by attendees of The Art Department. We spoke to Paulien Mandos of Playgrounds who shared that the team "loved the titles - especially the process of creating them and seeing insights into BUCK’s and Antfood’s work process. The titles also “explain” our new brand identity for The Art Department. It was a really nice full circle in the end." 

In May 2022, our Amsterdam team travelled to Berlin and Eindhoven to attend The Art Department. Seeing (and hearing) everything come together reinforced the unique opportunity we had: to share the perspectives of multiple artists with other artists to celebrate the experience of the creative process, which is messy, personal and, ultimately, brings our entire community together.