Listen/download: https://fanlink.to/naftsidi
Circa four billion years ago, six asteroids of unknown origin simultaneously reached Hadean Earth still scorched and melted from the collision with a massive space object. The six quickly sank, buried under lava. For eons they remained trapped in stone, cold and silent until the first human civilizations scattered across the globe, found these relics in the cracks of the Earth's crust, and carved statues in shapes reminding that of a human body. But civilizations emerge and collapse. Abandoned for hundreds of years, these ancient statues corroded and tumbled down. And yet, at the dawn of the 21st century, private researchers calling themselves Beyonders located each of the statues and began reconstruction in secret from world governments. Disguised as historical objects, massive structures were erected on top of the relics after ancient blueprints recovered from Babylon, Atlantis and Yucatan. Today the work completes. At last, the giants must awaken.
This animated video signifies the end of a huge period of my life that started with the production of the album Nobody Asked For This So I Did It, way before I turned to Nick Standing for recording the first guitar tracks. Back in 2016 I took the photo of construction workers on top of a nearby building and then decided it would be cool to make this a theme of the entire album only with a sci-fi twist. Ordinary people building a foundation for the future of humankind. And then the plot thickened with each new video revealing more and more of the structures they were working on from odd looking towers appearing to be parts of gigantic heads that turned out to belong to huge stone robots. The final video was supposed to tie everything together. I teased a few scenes in the Not The Beginning video. Back then I thought I would be able to finish Awaken The Giant a lot sooner, but life got crazier and production of some scenes had to be cancelled or postponed. Every segment in this video took me hours, sometimes days to design and a lot more to render in 4K on my workstation. Sometimes I had to return to finished footage to update the visuals which pushed the release date even further back. And yet, I just had to do it because from the inception of NAFTSIDI everything was for this video. Finally able to move on, I'm releasing the animation on my channel. I hope after so much tease, I at least did not disappoint you. Thanks so much for staying in our World Beyond. You made it happen.
- Vladimir
