Friday Video: Why Don’t We Call Them Halloween Carols?

In which a pumpkin scarecrow sings a ditty in a graveyard.

Tis the season… for Halloween themed videos.

This one’s short but sweet. It’s a collaboration between singer/songwriter J P Ashkar and animator Nick Shaheen. Shaheen explained to genesis of the project on his Facebook page:

“I challenged JP to write a 1-minute song about Halloween that I could turn into a fun animation and he did not disappoint. The character was sculpted and animated in C4D. All characters were animated with Rokoko motion capture and render in Redshift. Enjoy!!!”

And you will enjoy it. The music and lyrics are the stuff that infections earworms are made off and the playful yet somehow menacingly friendly character and personality of the pumpkin troubadour comes through clearly in spite of the shortness of the video. Ashkar’s vocals and Shaheen’s spooky imagery are a perfect match, and I can’t resist wishing this was the opening of a half hour Halloween television special about this otherworldly singers rambling adventure on Halloween night. Give it a listen and then tell me I’m wrong.

Nick Shaheen has a web site here, and J P Ashkar has a page here where you can be directed to his social media sites and where you can buy more of his music (I did!) A longer version of “Halloween” is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and other online music streamers.

10/31/23 UPDATE

I notice that I’m getting a lot of traffic for this post. This makes me happy because I’m a fan of the song and video like most of you looking for the song this Halloween season. I have nothing to do with the song or video. All credit must go to Mr. Shaheen and Mr. Ashkar.

In fact, this year these two gentleman have updated their video to extend beyond a minute with new animation to match the full 2 minutes and 37 seconds of the entire song. I prefer the wider aspect ratio of the earlier version, but the new video’s still great fun and worth checking out.