Spanish singer Sharif’s latest hit, La Carta, comes to life with a lively new music video by Ziro Pictures INK studios. Here, cut-up pieces of paper animate credits then give way to marker-drawn screens with a stylized, ink and paper look. La Carta is about letters between Sharif, in Zaragoza, and an old friend in Cuba. It tells the tale of the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and the political corruption and greed both there, and in the US and Cuba.

Sharif’s soulful singing and the driving beat of the song build along with the visual storytelling in the piece. A heart in chains which opens the video and later returns at the end, free from chains and vibrating with health, is emblematic of the storytelling of the piece, where simple marker drawings are combined with layers of more symbolic visuals.

We got a chance to speak with director, Guillermo Marijuan Campuzano, who told us a about his process. “Due to the fact it was a bit difficult to show an idea like this one in drawings, I had to find and use some analogies in different verses,” he said. “Then I started the drawing process where I made all the pieces with pencil, ink and watercolor pens, cut them, assembled them and organized them in labeled bags. That process took a lot of time and some tests, but it was fun and rewarding…It took me many hours to move the pieces and shoot them in general but it worth it.”

At several points, a handwritten letter is sent in a bottle across the Atlantic, represented by layers of hand-drawn waves. Marijuan Campuzano said this was the most time-consuming part, saying, “I had to move a lot of pieces in sync and try to make them smoother.” When we asked about post-production, he said, “All of the process is hand-animated. Regarding the post-production, I only animated some loop frames in Dragon frame’s software, that was all.”

Here are some behind the scenes photos of Marijuan Campuzano’s hand-drawn process: