OK Go Team With Blender Studio For Animated 'Impulse Purchase' Video

09-03-2025

(2b) OK Go has teamed up with Blender Studio, BAFTA-winning filmmaker and animator Will Anderson, and acclaimed designer and artist Lucas Zanotto to bring their track "Impulse Purchase" to life in a spectacular new visual.

Crafted entirely in Blender, a free, open-source software for creating 3D art, the "Impulse Purchase" visual combines Will Anderson's signature fun and quirky animation style with Lucas Zanotto's iconic design language. OK Go frontman Damian Kulash controlled the main character in real time via face-capture; unlike the careful determinism of traditional animation, this system captures a live performance.

"It began with my love of Lucas Zanatto's short animated loops - they're so inventive, so full of joy, always delivering little doses of the kind of wonder we're always searching for in our own videos. So I thought the universe flowing from his brain might be the perfect setting for a lyric video, but when I reached out to him, he had a more ambitious project to propose: a 'live performance' with me AS one of his characters. Suddenly it was a much weirder, more wonderful project than what I'd envisioned," shares OK Go frontman and video director, Damian Kulash.

The pair teamed up with Will Anderson to design a dynamic procedural system in Blender for puppeting a digital character via face-capture software that anyone can use. The clip released today features a performance tracking Damian's face, but, like all Blender Studio projects, the source files for "Impulse Purchase" are free for all to use and adapt, and the Blenderheads have already started going wild with them.

All of the necessary files, tools, and documentation, are available for download here. The project aims to share both the file and the process behind it, so users can not only interact with the main character from the video, but also learn how to create their own interactive animations.

"Blender Studio is all about exploring technical and artistic solutions for creative challenges, and this project is a perfect example. We are proud to support and partner with these talented artists, who share Blender's values of creating and sharing knowledge with the world," adds Blender COO, Francesco Siddi.

"Impulse Purchase" appears on OK Go's latest studio album And the Adjacent Possible which was released earlier this year. Produced by OK Go and longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon, Tame Impala, MGMT)