Dua Lipa's Hallucinatory new music video by The Mill features dancing aubergines

The London-born singer songwriter's track 'Hallucinate', from her studio album, Future Nostalgia, was created by global studio The Mill, which works across VFX, design, AR, VR, direction, animation and experiential projects.

The production company Titmouse provided additional animation, and the entire project was created by people in isolation thanks to the lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic quarantine.

The colourful, feel-good video stars the animated Dua Lipa alongside a cast of strange and wonderful characters such as muscular men and raunchy women with stars for heads acting as podium dancers and anthropomorphised stars and hearts. Aubergines and peaches also become backing dancers, though we're not sure of the significance of these particular edibles/emojis.

There's no shortage of unicorns, either; and a particularly trippy sequence at the end shows the world become an almighty disco ball, with very loved-up-looking dolphins flying through space.

The Mill's Lisha Tan directed the video, and drew inspiration from "the disco aesthetic of Studio 54 in the '70s and cartoons from multiple iconic eras", according to the studio. Drawing from the stylistic conventions of cartoons from various periods, she evolved them to feel more modern but all the while using traditional hand-drawn animation techniques.

"Dua Lipa approached us with the concept of creating a 2D animated world inspired by the '70s disco heyday with the wacky characters, different rooms, diverse colour palettes and a sense of never knowing which direction the psychedelic journey will take you on," says Tan. "We incorporated true-to-life details such as her dream scenario of hanging out in a flower field and dancing with her pet pygmy goats, through to falling into her genuine nightmare... clowns. The attention to detail was crucial."

She adds, "Given so many summer music shows are cancelled this year, we all wanted to create something super fun, escapist and that has a colourful festival vibe."