Billie Eilish transformed into an animated character for animated segments in her highly anticipated concert film Happier than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles. And recently, the seven-time Grammy Award winner gave her fans a behind-the-scenes look at how her animated alter-ego was created. The hitmaker shared a video on her Instagram story in which she was wearing a red and black motion capture suit covered with reflective marker.
Eilish also donned a large black mocap helmet and dots and lines were painted on her face and white balls were adhered to her hands, legs and shoes. In the clip, she was sitting in a director’s chair as she panned the camera to show off the suit from various angles. She turned the camera back on her face, tilted her head and flipped off the camera as she concluded her video.
In Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles, Eilish performs her entire new album on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. The live action scenes from the concert are intercut with animated segments in which Billie’s character drives a car around Los Angeles.
The live action scenes were directed by Robert Rodriguez while the animated portion was helmed by Patrick Osbourne.
Osbourne told CinemaBlend, “Billie wanted a noir inspired version of LA with an animated character in the vein of Ralph Bakshi or Richard Williams, something from Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Cool World, or these eighties kind of rotoscopes animated character and what, what would be like the modern version of that and could we put an animated scene in between every song and then have then converge somehow in the final moments and the live show.”
He went on to say that Bille was inspired by the iconic animated sex symbol Jessica Rabbit from the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He added that he was surprised that she wanted her alter-ego to have blonde hair since the pop star was known for her signature black hair with green roots.
The concert featured all 16 songs from her newly released album, Happier Than Ever.
“It was such an honour to work with so many amazing and talented people on this and celebrate this city that I love so much,” she wrote on social media. “It was such a full-circle moment and so cool getting to perform my entire album front to back for you at the one and only Hollywood Bowl,” the singer wrote in her caption.
