Daniel Brereton animates Metronomy's Reservoir music video using coloured pens
Dezeen Music Project: English electronic group Metronomy's latest single Reservoir is accompanied by an animated music video created with felt-tip pens by director Daniel Brereton.
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_12.jpg)
Brereton directed the Reservoir video and drew the coloured illustrations himself, after Metronomy founder Joseph Mount came up with the idea to create an animation.
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_6.jpg)
The colourful illustrations loosely fit with the lyrics of the song, including an underwater section that alludes to the title. All four band members are also depicted as cartoon characters.
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_5.jpg)
"Joe's music creates emotions for me that I like to draw upon, and not be afraid to do something exciting and engaging," said Brereton. "I also wanted to make something people would watch more than once."
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_4.jpg)
Subtle references to previous Metronomy videos can be spotted throughout the clip. "That was Joe's idea, which we ran with," Brereton explained.
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_1.jpg)
Each frame of the animation had to be drawn twice to avoid pencil marks appearing in the sequence.
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_11.jpg)
"I didn't want to get pencil outline on the finished thing – Matt Lloyd, the lead animator, went a bit white when I told him this," Brereton revealed. "So we drew a rough in pencil on white paper, and then using a lightbox we coloured in the drawings, using the pencil lines to trace, onto a lovely printmaking paper that made the ink bleed like anything."
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_10.jpg)
The video took around eight weeks to produce and Brereton joked that they got through 457 felt-tip pens during this period.
![Metronomy Reservoir music video by Daniel Brereton](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2014/05/Metronomy-Reservoir-music-video_Drawings-by-Daniel-Brereton_dezeen_468_7.jpg)
Reservoir appears on Metronomy's album Love Letters, which was released on 10 March.