The Artists Behind Childish Gambino’s Animated Neighborhood

Donald Glover is walking down the street. The neighborhood is animated. The credits are about to give you several more artists to know.

Childish Gambino’s “Feels Like Summer” video arrived in September 2018, directed by Glover, Ivan Dixon and Greg Sharp. For this return, we’re less interested in racing through a list of recognizable faces than in the people who drew the world around them.

On Dixon’s own project page, Justin Richburg is credited with character designs, Felix Colgrave with the storyboard and Andrew Onorato with backgrounds. The animation team includes those collaborators and a wider group of artists; Dixon also handled compositing.

These are different jobs, not interchangeable names beneath a finished clip. Character design establishes how a person is represented. Storyboarding plans the sequence. Background art builds the space where it happens. Animation makes the figures move through it. A familiar music video is a very good place to begin noticing the distinctions.

The official upload keeps the film available in one place. Watch the walking figure, then the scenery, then how a new interaction enters the frame. You can appreciate the craft without needing to identify every cameo.

We love the moment music leads us toward another kind of art. This time it takes us down a drawn street, past a lot of famous faces—and toward the less famous names who made the whole thing move.

Still from Feels Like Summer. Directors: Donald Glover, Ivan Dixon and Greg Sharp; character design: Justin Richburg. Source: Childish Gambino’s official video.