Director Gary Levesque Blends Anime and Beauty in Stunning Film for GODMODE

Director Gary Levesque and animation studio Wizz bring to life the visual universe for agency and incubator Closer’s new brand, co-founded with Chloë Grace Moretz and Rina Sawayama: GODMODE

Conceived as a beauty brand for gen z, GODMODE offers a glitchy, colourful and assertive aesthetic that hijacks the classic cosmetic codes of luxury to inject them with a new vitality. With a primary audience of gamers, each product is designed to empower self expression.

The brand has called on director Gary Levesque and animation studio Wizz via All Of Us Here in London, which represents them on the UK market, to bring to life GODMODE’s visual universe at the crossroads of video games and pop culture.

The animated films take place within an expansive and developed narrative universe, spanning galaxies, ancient sleeping gods, glittering alien biomes and interstellar explorers. Everything is animated in a stylised 2D aesthetic that calls to mind classic retro anime visuals like that of Neon Genesis Evangelion or Akira - packed with dynamic fight scenes and a rich lore. Gary expertly utilises this unique 2D style, retaining a hand-drawn rendering inspired by traditional animation. This attention to the craft being baked into the films speaks to GODMODE’s ethos of moving cosmetics into a realm of play and free exploration, empowering consumers to create their own vision of beauty.

From this base idea springs forth a whole universe of colour. Gary and his team brilliantly weave together live packshots, performance, unique character designs, sprawling cosmic backgrounds and VFX to visualise the world of GODMODE, with its striking and identifiable aesthetic.

“From the animation we built into the packaging to the AR experience we’ve embedded into the products, we wanted people to feel like they were entering a new world every time they use (the products)” - explains brand muse and ambassador, Rina Sawayama in an interview with Paper magazine.

With GODMODE, Chloë and Rina aren't just launching a brand with Closer: they're signing up to a vision, in which animation becomes a cultural tool, a means of storytelling and aesthetic expression for a generation that lives between reality and a parallel world, controller in hand and looking to the future.