Creating a visual world for Big Big Train's Woodcut

When Big Big Train asked us to build the visuals for their 2026 album Woodcut, we were thrilled, as they brought forward such a unique concept that we knew would translate so well into effective visual storytelling.

We were very fortunate to be able to create an accompanying visual film for every track on the album. Some were used as promotional music videos and all are used live visual films for the band’s The Woodcut & Other Stories Tour.

The Story of Woodcut

Woodcut follows a continuous narrative about The Artist, a figure struggling with life, creativity, and the fine line between inspiration and madness. On a walk, The Artist finds a piece of magical heartwood and uses it to craft something unique and beautiful. Then the boundary between dream and reality starts to dissolve. The Artist steps through their own creation into a strange, Narnia-like world.

Underneath the fantasy, the album explores artistic sacrifice, human endurance, and what it means to make something handmade and analogue-minded in a digital age of artificial intelligence and computer aided design.

The visual language of the album has a lovely origin. During gallery visits on tour, the band was struck by an exhibition of negative-positive woodcuts at the Munch Museum in Oslo. That visit sparked the album's whole aesthetic, and the band commissioned Dorset-based artist Robin Mackenzie to create the striking woodcut print that became the album cover.

That cover was our starting point. We wanted the Woodcut world to feel like a natural extension of it, as if the print had come to life and opened up around the viewer. But we also wanted to push beyond it. Once The Artist steps through into the woodcut, the rules of reality no longer apply, so we let the world become a psychedelic dream space, keeping the graphic, carved quality of the original artwork while expanding it into something immersive and surreal.

Building It: Cinema 4D and Octane

Everything was animated in Octane Render, using completely custom 3D models built in Cinema 4D. Nothing in these films is off the shelf or generated with AI. Every environment, prop, and character was made specifically for this album. We worked to keep a handmade, tactile feel throughout, so the visuals never lose the sense that they were carved, not just rendered.

The Artist, Made of Wood

The most important character design decision was The Artist himself. Taking cues from stop-motion character design, we made him out of wood. He's a wooden figure, a piece of the material that the whole story revolves around.

This gave us a way to show his emotional journey through his physical form. Across the visual films for each track, he gradually becomes more human. The change is subtle at first, then more and more pronounced as he goes through the immense, emotionally taxing process of making his art.

That journey pays off in the final track, "Counting Stars." Having endured the whole creative ordeal, The Artist finally finds happiness and joy. It's the emotional climax of the story, and we wanted the visuals to make it land.

A lot of music visuals work as a companion piece: attractive and atmospheric, sitting alongside the music. That wasn't what we wanted to do here. With Woodcut, our goal was to convey the concept of the album itself and tell its story in a visually engaging way, with every film serving both the narrative and the song it accompanies.

The result is a set of visual films that we believe work individually, as videos for each track, and as a whole, following The Artist from that first walk in the woods to the final moment of joy.

https://youtu.be/lu2Xm2gMMWY?si=vZDA1ff87SWw5cic

We're incredibly proud to have been part of bringing Woodcut to life, and we're grateful to Big Big Train for trusting us with such a rich, layered concept.

If you'd like to see how we can build a visual world for your project, get in touch.