After releasing his latest single 'Santoshi Mata', Dijf Sanders shares the official video for the track just a few days ahead of his Friday February 14 album release.
‘Santoshi Mata’ comes with a delightful nostalgic video from Brussels based visual artist Bert Juliaan Vercruysse, in which Santoshi fights her way to the temple in a pixelated Game Boy inspired Nepalese setting.
Bert shared some of the ideas for the video with us:
"The production of the ‘Santoshi Mata’ video really was an intensely funny and rewarding rollercoaster.
First time I listened to Dijf's ‘Santoshi Mata’ was coincidentally at the oldest temple in Nepal, Changu Narayan, a stone's throw from Baktapur. At that moment everything actually coincided: Dijf who likes to play (music) with Game Boys, his Nepal adventures and this exciting song named after the goddess of sufficiency. It was obvious that I was going to make a kind of Nepalese Game Girl in a pixelated Nepal.
To structure the story, I started with drawing a mandala with all levels of the game in it. The center was the temple, obviously guarded by a 'badass' boss, of course, who had to be reached via a detour. Then I had the floor plan of the clip, the master plan.
However, I had never animated anything similar so I went looking for help. I came across my neighbor / friend and co-animator Daniel Scott. He drew most of the pixelated backgrounds, animated gifs and props that I needed. I drew the Santoshi character. After 10 sketches I got it right and then translated her into a 32 by 32 pixel image. Which is actually harder than it sounds like."
Check out the video for 'Santoshi Mata' below, and keep an eye out for Dijf Sanders' 'Puja', which will be released Friday on limited vinyl and CD.
Dijf Sanders and his band (including Simon Segers and Mattias De Craene) will be touring the record in spring. Check out all upcoming tour dates here.