Buda.tv is an animation studio from Argentina that is known for playful, story driven animations. They asked us to collaborate on a passion project of theirs: Seven Animal Sins. This short story is about the pitfalls of humanity, illustrated by animals. Together, we came up with the idea that the music should have the form of a fun little song. This would match the colorful animations and add a character of its own, making the sound design fun to listen to even without the video.
Together with guitarist Floris Bosma, we created a musical canvas. This canvas has the same musical structure for each explanation of one sin, making it feel like separate little stories. To keep the flow of the entire animation interesting, we added some modulations to create the feeling that the music evolves, just like the story.
In our search for the right tone, we started out by making the song more of a sketch with funny voices and jokes. Lyricist Teun Beurskens helped us to write the lyrics and tell the story effectively, while also incorporating some humor. After the initial version, we decided to turn back the humor dial a bit and went for a Randy Newman-like song, using irony to convey a message. After recording everything, we added sound design to each scene of each animal, greatly enhancing the humor and message.
Eventually, Seven Animal Sins became a catchy, uplifting song that supports and reinforces the underlying message about human flaws. We are proud to present this project to you and hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
We created every separate scene in a way that the sound design and animation are entertaining to watch, even without the song. This way, the client has more ways to share short bits of content.
Each scene is part of the bigger story, but is also strong enough to stand on its own.
Therefore, each animal sin has its own instrumental version. The song ties it all together.