ANIMAL’s feature Artist’s Notebook asks artists to show us their original idea sketch next to a finished piece. This week, artist Cody Critcheloe shows us his sketches for SSION’s new music video “HIGH.”

The video was written and directed by Critcheloe and shot in his native Kansas City, conceptualized as “an Americanized Dante’s Inferno.” Come in. Go from the karaoke basement were a gigantic red-oozing phallic fortune cookie is being engulfed by a frightening woman to an absurd artistic revelation in a glossy bourgeois upper floor. 

I always make a bunch of sketches before I shoot a video. I believe that drawing in general helps me stay thin and makes all of my dreams come true. When I don’t draw before I make a video things seem to go haywire. I think I have a draftswoman in my head and heart. She guides me through the storm.

See the sketches in the gallery.

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