“Hello Neighbor” begins with a sly wink that slides by so fast you might miss it: A drawn map of the United States flashes on the screen, but the states are backwards. Virginia’s on the west coast, California on the east. By the time this subtle bit of wryness registers, you’ve moved into colorful, delightful landscapes of animation.

It’s eye candy, pure and simple. Well, it’s eye and ear candy, because Hello Neighbor is a music video–the tune and the animation were created by a husband and wife team working under the moniker Impactist. What makes the video particularly cool is that it was created on an iPod: All the animation was drawn by finger using a paint application. Yes, an iPod.

Kelly Meador and Daniel Elwing explain that:

-Frames were animated one by one the old fashioned way.
-Drawing and painting all done on the touch screen of an iPod Touch.
-Minor texture elements were imported into the frames using the ‘photo’ app.
-Layers were used along with the simple transparency slider provided for compositing.
-Layers were flattened and reimported due to limitations of the number of layers available.
-Frames were output for final Quicktime using AE for finishing and color adjustment since the apps could not do this themselves.
-File management was very time consuming and required a bit of trial and error to find the best approach.

So rad. And the best part is that unless you’re told, you’d never know how it was made: It’s just good work, pure and simple.

Impactist makes music, animation, art design, and photos. Read the whole story on the making of “Hello Neighbor” here and see more cool work here.