Arts
Randy strikes big with ‘Godzilla’
Though the COVID-19 lockdowns earlier this year spelled a time of uncertainty and difficulty for most, there were also those who managed to turn a negative situation into a positive one.
Randy’s Eminem special. Pix courtesy Randy Chriz of Meraki United
For self-taught animator/artist Randy Chriz Perera, the long curfew days gave him the chance to focus more on his passion. This, combined with the surging interest in online content, gave him an opportunity of a lifetime.
On September 16, Randy and his company Meraki United were invited to sign as a supplier with Interscope, a record label of the Universal Music Group. Interscope manages some of the world’s leading artists including Eminem, Madonna, Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre, Guns N’ Roses, and Sting etc.
Randy runs Meraki with his wife, Portia Ratnayake as the COO and Talent Manager. Meraki United does a variety of work that involves animation or illustrations, projects as diverse as doing VFX for movies and wall murals etc.
Tracing how it all came about, Randy goes back to March this year, when rapper Marshall Mathers popularly known as Eminem released a new music album titled ‘Music To Be Murdered By’.
Considered a global phenomenon, at 47 years of age, Eminem is still hugely popular and Randy, who has been a fan of the artist since 1999 wanted to pay homage by creating artwork for ‘Godzilla’(ft Juice Wrld), a track off the album.
Drawing things that inspire him on a daily basis is a practice that is a form of stress relief and breaks the monotony of work for Randy so it was no surprise that what started out as a singular artwork quickly materialized into an entire concept for a fan-made music video for Godzilla. But, this also meant that Randy had to clear his schedule and forego weeks of billable hours to focus on this.
When it comes to his videos, Randy’s aim is to always relate a story. So he paid special attention to the narrative of the video and researched the lyrics of the song. He didn’t stop there. He also went on to highlight the rhyming scheme that Eminem uses. This was also noticed by people on Youtube.
Randy Chriz Perera: From art to videos
The end result was a full blown, detailed animated video for the entirety of the Godzilla track.
Eminem’s album quickly became a global bestseller and the artist announced that he would be doing an official music video for Godzilla. To Randy, this was good news because it meant Eminem’s massive global audience would be waiting on a music video.
With renewed vigour, he spent several sleepless nights to finish his video before the release of the official music video and uploaded his video on YouTube on March 8, 2020. Nine hours later, Eminem released his official video.
After the upload was complete, Randy simply slept for a good half a day. By the time he woke, his video already had about half a million international views. It hit a million by the end of the day. The video currently has over seven million views on YouTube.
In the week that followed Randy received thousands of emails complimenting him on the video. He also had several reaction videos done by different individuals on YouTube, including one from the most popular Reactors on the site “NoLifeShaq”. Soon, his subscribers on YouTube grew from 1000 to 87,000.
But, the best news for Randy came four days later, in an email he nearly discarded. It had two sentences and a tiny signature which read ‘Interscope Records.’
“I literally skipped a beat. My legs went numb and I was like ‘this can’t be real,’” Randy recalls. The label had enjoyed his video and wanted to do more work with him.
Eventually one of their creative directors got in touch with Randy and began pitching ideas for various videos for their artists.
During the first week of September, Randy completed his first video for Interscope – a lyric video for a contemporary hip-hop artist Smino.
It was released on September 22 on the artist’s official streaming platforms. Soon after, Randy signed a contract with Interscope Universal Music Group as a regular supplier for the label – a milestone for Sri Lankan content creators.
Randy and the Meraki United team have currently produced six more music/ lyric videos for Interscope, of which the official animated video for ‘FASTER’ by DAX featuring ‘Tech N9ne’ is a major highlight. This animation will be in the new EA Sports UFC 4 video game soundtrack, and marks the beginning of what is sure to be an exciting partnership.
For more information on Randy follow him on Youtube at- Meraki United by Randy Chriz- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QaGLEEVMR9G6z9ZeI9aKw
His fan made Godzilla video can be accessed on- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49OY0kV0n_M