A Turtle's Salon du The: Mind the Evil Squirrel

It's not often that a music video comes along these days which makes you shout, 'jumping jehosaphat, how'd they do that?!' London animation outfit Shynola have made such a video with the cinema-release-only music video for Coldplay's 'Strawberry Swing'. Shynola animated meticulously hand-drawn chalk drawings on the floor around the real life Chris Martin, as he quests to save a (chalk) damsel from the attentions of a villainous squirrel.

Richard Kentworthy of Shynola said in a recent interview, "we are not particularly interested in making or watching slick animation. We are attracted to the more unusual uses of it, and the inherent charm that something hand-crafted has."

The whimsical, dream-like animation certainly possesses the traditional, pastoral, slightly dark charm of classic nursery rhymes or children's stories, in keeping with the wistful, joyous tone of 'Strawberry Swing'.

Here are a few of my favourite stills, taken from the HD version of the video at babelgum.

[caption id="attachment_143" align="aligncenter" width="405" caption="Chris Martin wakes up"]