Animator makes lyric video for George Michael classics

George Michael sold millions of copies of Careless Whisper and enjoyed similar success with Wham’s Last Christmas in 1984.

Now, Adam Le Gallez is looking to repeat that success with animation lyric videos which have been posted on George Michael’s official YouTube channel.

The Last Christmas video has already outstripped Careless Whisper for views, although it was only released a few days ago, and both animations have earned plaudits from viewers on the channel.

Mr Le Gallez works locally as a freelance animator and landed the Careless Whisper commission through a friend with music industry links who had been approached about a video. He passed the opportunity on.

Luckily, creating a project for such a big name was not as stressful as he initially imagined.

‘They came to me with quite a quick turnaround, but they left a lot of the creative side to me, which was nice,’ said Mr Le Gallez.

‘As someone who does art, I really appreciate that because it can be annoying when someone is really nitpicky about how you draw, and I got it out on time, which was good.’

The piece took him approximately 29 hours to create and he stayed faithful to the original music video, recreating its various scenes.

Alongside the story lyrics are displayed through speech bubbles, through windows and on computer screens.

‘Andrew Ridgeley, one of the members of Wham, commented and gave feedback on the video, which was quite exciting,’ he said.

After the success of the first video, he was immediately commissioned to create another lyric video for Last Christmas.

Mr Le Gallez said he worked hard to make sure it is just as good as the first.

‘This video has been slightly more stressful than the first because I was given quite a quick deadline.

‘I made it as quick as I could and they extended the deadline to make a few changes, and now it has become bigger than the first one. I am very pleased with it.’

‘One of my goals for the year was to hopefully work with a big artist and then this came along. So I ticked that off which is really great.’

Mr Le Gallez got into animation at a young age. It was a hobby that himself and his friends picked up. Initially, they started doing frame-by-frame animation with Lego.

He had always had a knack for drawing so he progressed into making illustrative animations which he would post to his YouTube channel.

By the age of 16 he was being commissioned to create animations and now at the age of 27 he has credits for the likes of BBC, Universal Music Group and Comedy Central. He has also worked with several Youtubers such as the Sidemen to help their ideas come to life.

Although, he has worked with such big names it is also important for him to stay connected locally.

‘Occasionally living in Guernsey can be a barrier as a freelancer. I have definitely considered moving to London at times,’ he said.

‘There’s a lot more going on than people realise though and especially since beginning at the Digital Greenhouse I have met all kinds of people doing all kinds of different things.’

n Adam Le Gallez’s webpage is www.adamation.co.uk.