OK Go Teams Up with Blender Studio for “Impulse Purchase” Visual

OK Go Teams Up with Blender Studio for “Impulse Purchase” Visual
OK Go/Photo Credit: Piper Ferguson
OK Go/Photo Credit: Piper Ferguson

GRAMMY Award-winning rock bandย OK Goย has teamed up withย Blender Studio, BAFTA-winning filmmaker and animatorย Will Anderson, and acclaimed designer and artistย Lucas Zanottoย to bring their track โ€œImpulse Purchaseโ€ to life in a spectacular new visual. Watch it:

OK Go - Impulse Purchase (Official Animated Video)

Crafted entirely in Blender, a free, open-source software for creating 3D art, the โ€œImpulse Purchaseโ€ visual combines Will Andersonโ€™s signature fun and quirky animation style with Lucas Zanottoโ€™s iconic design language. OK Go frontman Damian Kulash controlled the main character in real time via face-capture; unlike the careful determinism of traditional animation, this system captures a live performance.

โ€œIt began with my love of Lucas Zanattoโ€™s short animated loops โ€” theyโ€™re so inventive, so full of joy, always delivering little doses of the kind of wonder weโ€™re always searching for in our own videos. So I thought the universe flowing from his brain might be the perfect setting for a lyric video, but when I reached out to him, he had a more ambitious project to propose: a โ€˜live performanceโ€™ with me AS one of his characters. Suddenly it was a much weirder, more wonderful project than what Iโ€™d envisioned,โ€ shares OK Go frontman and video director, Damian Kulash.

The pair teamed up with Will Anderson to design a dynamic procedural system in Blender for puppeting a digital character via face-capture software that anyone can use. The clip released today features a performance tracking Damianโ€™s face, but, like all Blender Studio projects, the source files for โ€œImpulse Purchaseโ€ are free for all to use and adapt, and the Blenderheads have already started going wild with them.

All of the necessary files, tools, and documentation, are available for downloadย HERE. The project aims to share both the file and the process behind it, so users can not only interact with the main character from the video, but also learn how to create their own interactive animations.

โ€œBlender Studio is all about exploring technical and artistic solutions for creative challenges, and this project is a perfect example. We are proud to support and partner with these talented artists, who share Blenderโ€™s values of creating and sharing knowledge with the world,โ€ adds Blender COO, Francesco Siddi.

โ€œImpulse Purchaseโ€ appears on OK Goโ€™s latest studio albumย And the Adjacent Possibleย whichย was released earlier this year. Produced by OK Go and longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon, Tame Impala, MGMT), both the album (availableย HERE) and its inventive pop-up packaging (seenย HERE) have generated lots of awards buzz:

โ€œOK Go are back with more proof that they remain the masters of power-pop gems.โ€ Rolling Stone

โ€œBursting with energyโ€ฆ. Itโ€™s impossible not to smile as it plays.โ€ London Times

โ€œOne of my favorite albums of the year – unexpected, expansive, and exactly what I didnโ€™t know I needed. A strong Grammy contender.โ€ Allison Hagendorf

โ€œThe alt/indie/pop/rock band gives a masterclass in genre taffyโ€”they stretch sound, twist conventions, and pull you right in.โ€ Music Connection

โ€œA revolutionary vinyl jacket design that transforms the simple act of opening an album into a moment of wonder and discovery that perfectly complements their boundary-pushing musical approach.โ€ Yanko Design

OK Go has already unveiled two groundbreaking official music videos forย And the Adjacent Possibleโ€™sย lead singles. The moving mosaic for โ€œA Stone Only Rolls Downhillโ€ was created using 64 videos playing across 64 phones. The single-take video for โ€œLoveโ€ features complex choreography between the band, 29 robots, and over 60 mirrors to create an extraordinary spectacle of infinite reflections and human-scale kaleidoscopes.

OK Go supported the release of the LP with the first leg of theirย And the Adjacent Possible Tourย of North America earlier this year.ย ย Next week the band will embark on the tourโ€™s second leg. The 12 city trek kicks off on September 11 in Kansas City, MO, and wraps on December 8 in Nashville, TN. Once again,ย LA Exesย will provide support. Tickets for all shows are on sale now. A complete list of upcoming live dates and ticket information can be foundย HERE.


OK Go – And the Adjacent Possible Tour 2025

September 11, 2025 – Kansas City, MO – The Truman

September 12, 2025 – Omaha, NE – The Admiral

September 13, 2025 – Denver, CO – Levitt Pavilion: Indie 102.3โ€™s Indieverse Festival^

September 14, 2025 – Salt Lake City, UT – Red Butte Gardens^+

November 06, 2025 – Dallas, TX – House of Blues

November 07, 2025 – Houston, TX – House of Blues

November 08, 2025 – Austin, TX – Stubbโ€™s Waller Creek Amphitheatre

November 09, 2025 – Oklahoma City, OK – Tower Theatre

December 05, 2025 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel

December 06, 2025 – Raleigh, NC – The Ritz

December 07, 2025 – Atlanta, GA – The Eastern

December 08, 2025 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl

^LA Exes not appearing

+with support fromย Bartees Strange


About OK Go

Since their inception OK Go has been something more than a band and something different from an art project. With a career that includes award-winning videos,ย New York Timesย op-eds, collaborations with pioneering dance companies, tech giants, NASA, animators and Muppets, and an experiment that encoded their music on actual strands of DNA, OK Go continue to fearlessly dream and build new worlds in a time when creative boundaries have all but dissolved. Formed as a quartet in Chicago in 1998 and relocated to Los Angeles three years later, OK Go (Damian Kulash, Timothy Nordwind, Dan Konopka, Andy Ross) have spent their career in a steady state of transformation and continue to add to a curriculum vitae filled with experimentation in a variety of mediums. OK Goโ€™s work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, and their achievements have been recognized with twenty-one Cannes Lions, twelve CLIOs, three VMAs, two Webbys, The Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, and a Grammy. The band has also partnered with the Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas to create OK Go Sandbox, an educational non-profit that provides free resources to teachers that use OK Go’s videos as starting points to teach STEAM concepts.