Endsong is a New York City-based progressive rock quartet. To support their new album “Our Road to Dust,” the band turned to Atlanta-based creative Wayne Joyner (waynejoyner.com), who created an animated lyric video for the track “Book of Complaints.” In the video, a book is pulled from the shelf of an old library. Upon opening it, the lyrics appear in time with the song, and imagery pops out of the book as its pages turn, visualizing the song’s lyrics and themes.
“The song was called ‘Book of Complaints’…so the song’s about a book,” Joyner recalls. “Let me see what I can try to do with animating a book. I made this cool pop-up book, and I used all these cutouts that I found.”
When it comes to his music-video work, the band or artist often isn’t sure what direction to go in for a song, giving him a lot of creative freedom. In the case of “Book of Complaints,” the band suggested the idea of a “haunted library in the woods.”
“I was like, ‘How am I going to do this?” he recalls.
Joyner turned to Envato, an online marketplace for video imagery, templates and photography. He also used LTX Studio, a free AI video generator, to create the library backdrop.
“Some people are against this, and some are not,” he says of AI’s place in production. “I didn’t have the time to go and model an entire library.”
He found a number of two-dimensional characters on the Envato site and animated them in a style similar to that on a pop-up book. Then, he loaded the imagery into After Effects and applied a dust layer, helping to create depth and the look of a 3D environment.
Joyner uses Adobe Premiere for editing, running on an Alienware PC. For videos that will appear on YouTube, he will typically provide the client with a high-definition deliverable. On occasion, he will create 4K assets.
Joyner is currently creating the on-stage visuals for Creed’s upcoming summer tour. Looking back at the Endsong video, he ultimately spent around two weeks working on it and says the band really didn’t ask for any revisions.
“These guys were pretty happy, and pretty easy to please.”