David Byrne’s What Is The Reason For It gave Dustin Yellin and Art Official the opportunity to merge David’s simple, hand-drawn sketches with cutting-edge generative AI tools, bringing the song to life visually.

Artist Ricardo Villavicencio led the film’s creative direction, blending his talent in animation, storytelling, and AI for the project. Dustin worked closely with David to shape the characters and story arc, while Ricardo and Nick St. Pierre defined the AI animation approach. Using a stack of generative AI tools, a small creative team animated David’s drawings, ensuring every movement aligned with Dustin and David’s vision. Through Ricardo's mixed-media direction, they combined new-school AI animation with old-school techniques, reassembling the sequence from printed frames and embracing glitches and errors as reflections of human work.