Client
Black Taxi
Project
- Animation
- Music Video
- Mixed Media
Role
- Concept
- Art Direction
- Illustration
- Animation
- Collage
Black Taxi found us through our site with a simple question: could we take on a project like this? Then we heard the song — 'Ric Ocasek,' their New Wave tribute to the late Cars frontman — and that was that. It wasn't necessarily our usual style, but the track was irresistible: pure pop energy, a love letter to The Cars and to everything great about the '80s. We were hooked. (We're still listening to it.)
The music video
Black Taxi's tribute to Ric Ocasek — the Cars frontman who inspired a generation of New Wave dreamers.
A partnership built on trust
The project came with a full script and screenplay from Jared at Black Taxi, who trusted us completely to bring the world in his head to life. We worked hand in hand with his vision the whole way — his ideas and constant guidance shaping every frame. That partnership is a big part of why the whole team is so proud of where it landed.
Constraint became craft
At CatCow we love to experiment and challenge ourselves, and this called for something different. We built the video as a maximalist collage — hand-torn textures, saturated duotones, vintage pin-ups, treated photography, oversized type, and frame-by-frame moments, all stitched into one restless, high-energy world. The technique wasn't just an aesthetic choice; it was the key that made an ambitious video possible — a full 3D or hand-drawn frame-by-frame piece would have been a different scale entirely.
Every lyric became its own postcard — a Corvette tearing down a desert highway, neon Boston in 1980, the long ride to the Hall of Fame. Less a polished narrative than a feeling: fast, bright, and alive.
Stills from the ride
Credits
Client: Black Taxi
Direction: CatCow
Team: Kelly Messori, Florencia Benitez, Julian Nuñez, Dilan Gamma, Damian Messori