Collaborators
Brian Nern, Tobias Berblinger, Sara Tomic, Bob Patrick
Objective
PDX Pop Now! needed a promo for its 23rd annual compilation featuring 48 Portland artists. Artistic Director Brian Nern had been sitting on an idea for years: make it feel like one of those gloriously over-the-top K-Tel compilation commercials from the 1970s and '80s.
That was basically the entire brief.
Working with volunteer editor/project manager Sara Tomic and artwork created by Tobias Berblinger, I developed the concept into a short, deliberately ridiculous trip through outer space, complete with flying instruments, neon typography, warped album art, 6 featured artists, and a winged eyeball that unexpectedly became the star of the whole thing.
Constraints / Challenges
48 artists, one short promo
I narrowed the featured section to six artists, giving each enough time for the music and visuals to register while still including all 48 in the final track listingTwo-week production window
The concept, storyboard, animation, audio, editing, and finishing all needed to come together quicklyExisting artwork
The original illustration assets were created for the compilation cover, not animation, so I had to adapt and expand them for motionTiny volunteer team
With only a handful of collaborators, I handled the concept, script, motion design, character animation, audio production, and the final assemblyVery rusty After Effects skills
I hadn't done serious work in AE in years, so part of the production involved relearning the tool while building the spot
Make It Feel Like Lost Television
The goal wasn't simply to imitate VHS. I wanted the piece to feel like an artifact from an alternate version of late-night television: part K-Tel record commercial, part public-access TV, part cosmic fever dream.
The original compilation artwork already gave us a great visual vocabulary. I built the motion language around it: objects bouncing into frame, glowing outlines, star-field transitions, aggressive typography, and deliberately excessive analog effects.
And then there was the eyeball.
The CD sleeve art had already been completed by Tobias Berblinger, and he was able to provide me with layered PSDs of the original artwork.
Immediately upon seeing the artwork the winged eye jumped out to me as a potential hero character. I really wanted to make this guy fly.
The primary art direction from Brian Nern was to make it look and feel like a K-Tel records ad from the late 70s, ealry 80s. YouTube is a goldmine for references.
The entire idea formed in my head almost as soon as I had seen the artwork and a few references. I quickly got the basic treatment and a rough script together, then fed everything into AI to output this cheesy storyboard. What can I say… it at least got the point across.
Making the Eyeball Fly
Tobias's original artwork included a single winged eyeball. I extrapolated that illustration into a series of poses, creating a simple character rig in After Effects that let me control its direction, expression, wing position, and movement throughout the spot.
What started as a background element became the character that guides the viewer through the entire promo: hovering around the opening scene, leading the camera into space, and reacting to everything happening around it.
First, I created new poses the eyeball character in Photoshop, making sure to get approval from Tobias so that his original vision was preserved. (Maintaining the dimensional effect of the blood vessels was especially important 😂)
Then I created wing animation loops for each pose. A simple scale and rotate seemed to do the trick.
Then came a the more technical part: I created a subcomp of all the poses for the eye character and then built a custom control using AE's Essential Graphics feature so that I could control the poses from the master comp. Then it was just a matter of meticulously the eyeball's path and poses throughout the spot.
With the concept and visual language established, the rest was an exercise in controlled chaos: bringing dozens of moving pieces together while keeping the whole thing feeling like one continuous, slightly unhinged TV commercial.
Motion system
I built a reusable language of neon outlines, echoes, warps, flying objects, faux-3D artwork, and deliberately excessive transitions to tie the different scenes together.
Music edit
Six featured artists were cut into a rapid-fire sequence that gave each track a moment to register without killing the momentum.
Sound + VO
I recorded and arranged the audio, then brought in Bob Patrick to deliver the appropriately hyped-up announcer voice.
Analog finish
I moved the final edit into DaVinci Resolve for the finishing pass, using analog video effects to make the polished digital animation feel like it had spent 40 years deteriorating on a VHS tape.
Since the original artwork was painted in ProCreate, there we some limits to what I could easily animate. Given a bit more time, I would've loved to animate additional elements such the oscilloscope and VU meter. For the neo-warp effects, I was pleasantly surprised to see how for I was able to get using stock effects like glow and echo.
I leveraged my audio production skillset to layout the soundtrack and record the VO. I originally recorded the VO with my own voice, but received feedback from Brian Nern that it needed to sound "more hyped" 😅. So I drafted my friend Bob Patrick, the biggest hype-man I know. Bob has since used this piece to book more voice-over work.
In keeping with the 'old K-Tel ad' art direction, I felt that the final piece really need to have a more vintage, old VHS tape look. Rather than try to replicate that aesthetic in AE, I brought it into DaVinci Resolve Pro in order to leverage their stock Analog Damage effect. Done and done.
The final spot premiered as the official promo for the 2026 PDX Pop Now! compilation.
More importantly, I got to spend a couple of weeks making a winged eyeball fly through space in After Effects for Portland's independent music community.
Sometimes that's enough.
Credits
Art Direction: Brian Nern
Concept / Production / Motion: Larry Reynolds
Project Management: Sara Tomic
Original Illustration: Tobias Berblinger
Voiceover: Bob Patrick
