Chinese-Vietnamese-British artist Jianbo returned with a groundbreaking music video for his latest track “For The Honour”, featuring Nix Northwest.
The fully CGI visual, directed and animated by Dan French and produced by Stink, transports viewers into a surreal underground cyber world, exploring themes of identity, ancestry and honour.
Developed as a passion project between French and Jianbo, the video was crafted entirely in French’s spare time—built frame by frame without the aid of motion capture technology. Using iPhone footage of Jianbo dancing as reference, French manually animated each sequence, embracing a stylised aesthetic inspired by early-2000s video games like GTA.
The video blends cyberpunk visuals with cultural references drawn from Jianbo’s life, nodding to the cinematic style of Wong Kar Wai and the neon grit of Tokyo’s urban landscape. The result is a gamified narrative that tackles loyalty, sacrifice and the weight of legacy through a hyper-stylised digital lens.
Speaking on the project, French explained: “Jianbo and I go way back, 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 realise 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.”
Watch “For The Honour” below.