Chinese-Vietnamese-British artist Jianbo returns with “For The Honour,” a music video featuring Nix Northwest. Directed and animated by Dan French and produced by Stink, the fully CGI story takes viewers on a surreal descent into an underground cyber-world where identity, ancestry, and alternate futures collide.
The video was developed as a mutual passion project between Jianbo and French, who chose animation as a means to unlock complete creative freedom. Built entirely in French’s spare time between commercial jobs, the project was developed frame by frame with the director handling every aspect himself–from modeling and rigging to texturing and compositing.
Lacking access to motion capture studios or suits, French embraced a DIY approach, recording iPhone footage of Jianbo dancing, then manually translating the movements into animation. He leaned into a stylized aesthetic that nods to GTA and PS2-era graphics rather than striving for photorealism.
The gamified story spirals through a series of surreal vignettes exploring honor and Jianbo’s conflicted experience of it, while elements of Asian identity and internal struggles are layered throughout.
Inspired by the cinematic language of Wong Kar Wai, the urban sprawl of Tokyo, and the neon tones of cyberpunk futurism, French blended dystopian motifs with real cultural undercurrents in Jianbo’s life to also comment on loyalty, sacrifice, and the ripple effects of success.
The end result is a singular vision: raw and unfiltered. A music video grounded in modern culture that blurs the line between personal story and digital spectacle, designed to live entirely within the world its creators meticulously built by hand.
“Jianbo and I go way back,” said French. “I’d been wanting to make something with him for a while and what started as a simple idea quickly evolved into a full CGI underground world. I didn’t realize how much I’d bitten off, learning how to do motion capture, rig people and model faces… As it started coming to life, I kept pushing because having total creative freedom was a dream. I wasn’t aiming for photorealism, I actually liked the slightly off, mocap-heavy, gamey vibe–it gave GTA nostalgia. So I wanted it to stay rough around the edges to show that it was handcrafted for real by me.”
