Animation collective Studio Smack mixes digital high art with commercials and music videos. Other than winning almost every possible animation award out there with their world famous witch doctor video for de staat (a collaboration with Floris Kaayk), pretty much a global music phenomenon now, they create animation installations for museums and commercials for brands like Vpro, Mtv and Greenpeace.
In their work they combine immensely clear concepts with a monumental, dramatic style, mixing visual culture and comedy for massive effect. Whether they are creating a hooligan crowd, dancing as bewitched, or a forest of animals rebranded Coca Cola style for a nightmare-like commercial-type dream, they perfectly balance visual bravado with a critical approach to digital media and design.
Studio Smack is one of those rare studios in the digital domain that seems to perfectly blend visuals from our everyday digital media environment with a very clear signature style that is bombastic, clear clean-cut fun and at the experimental forefront of media art. Studio Smack projects part of the age-old paintingGarden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimus Bosch (1450-1516) onto the present-day world. The middle section of the triptych is brought to life through exciting animations.