‘Rap, Paper, Scissors’: A Deutsch copywriter’s side project is an ode to hip-hop
This is Side Hustle, a Digiday series that highlights fun, innovative, charitable or otherwise noteworthy passion projects of agency creatives, outside of the workplace.
The pressure of long hours, client deadlines and a steep learning curve can sometimes push creativity to the back seat early in one’s agency career. That’s why Isaac Versaw, a social copywriter at Deutsch New York, took on his fun, hip-hop-inspired side project.
Versaw’s project “Rap, Paper, Scissors” alludes to the popular game “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and is an illustrated, stop-motion animated series that celebrates hip-hop’s greatest artists along with some of their most iconic lines. These graphics were made completely out of construction paper, carved using an X-acto knife and then brought to life by animating them through stop-motion.
“Hip-hop to me is these artists sampling and layering to create something unique — and that’s what I tried to do with this project as well by layering a bunch of different media on top of each other,” said Versaw. “I also wanted to juxtapose the painstaking detail that goes into creating something handcrafted with the fleeting nature of the medium that is social media.”
The collection, which features the likenesses of Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Eazy-E, Drake and Kanye West, embraces the trend of using paper in GIF designs and illustrations on Instagram and Pinterest. Each takes a couple of days to make; cutting out the artists’ features and lyrics is the most laborious step of the process. Versaw has also picked up more followers on Instagram and Tumblr since he started pushing these illustrations out last year, timing some of them with an album release — like Kanye West’s most recent album “Life of Pablo.”
Ad position: web_incontent_pos1
“There’s a lot more pressure and intentionality that comes with creating with paper and animating using stop-motion,” said Versaw. “I really came to appreciate the importance of crafting by hand in the digital age and learned that knowing how to create away from the computer is what makes you an even stronger creative.”
“Rap, Paper, Scissors” can be found on Versaw’s website, as well as Tumblr page. It was also picked up by French creative blog Fubiz. Here are some of our favorites:
Drake
Ad position: web_incontent_pos2
Eminem
Biggie
Kendrick Lamar
Kanye
More in Marketing
In the marketing world, anime is following in the footsteps of gaming
As marketers look to take advantage of anime’s entry into the zeitgeist, they might be wise to observe the parallels between the evolution of anime as a marketing channel and the ways brands have learned to better leverage gaming in recent years.
With the introduction of video ads and e-commerce, Roblox looks to attain platform status
Roblox is expanding into more areas than just ads in 2024. Much like platforms such as Amazon and Facebook have transcended their origins to evolve from their origins as online marketplaces and social media channels, Roblox is in the midst of a transformation into a platform for all elements of users’ virtual lives.
PepsiCo wants to remain a ‘driver of culture’ as it turns to influencers and activations amid rebrand
The soda-maker says it can translate cultural relevance into sales volume.
Ad position: web_bfu