TOPIX/Mad Dog completed the Inferno effects and compositing for Life, Canadian rock band Our Ladys Peace first single for their fourth album, Spritual Machines. The video, which made its Canadian debut April 7, 2001, on MUCH MUSIC, has since begun airing in the US on MTV2. TOPIX/Mad Dog created graphics with an Asian flavor, inspired by Kanji characters, a written alphabet common to both China and Japan. They enlisted the assistance of a Chinese calligrapher and created a bed of characters by scanning them into the computer. Designer/inferno artist Lee Towdrow commented, For the beginning of the video we inserted the characters into the walls and the floor. Then our treatment becomes more graphic and by the end of the song, all the effects are jumping out in 3D. We scanned in the symbols and painted them in one stroke at a time, matching the sequence and direction of strokes as they were executed by the calligrapher. Then, we played them back as animations.
