One of my favourite bands to work with over the years has been Tabar who arrived for a video workshop with no clear idea of what they wanted but clutching a shopping bag containing lemons, a roll of rope, lots of yellow plastic ducks and sellotape.
This is what they made on their first venture into stop-go animation in about half an hour.

The Jet Boys weren't sure what defined their band visually despite being excellent musicians with a distinctive, quality sound. Yet as we sat around talking about music in a Zappa-esque zone it was suddenly obvious that their stand-out visual feature was their collective love of shoes.

With no time to prepare and almost no light left in the day I used what was available to film a dance sequence for a combined workshop presentation.
This sequence was swiftly edited into a number of very effective, atmospheric, black & white loops and the video workshop group were able to put on a great show for the dancers using VJ techniques and newly learned skills.

Powerful music, fine lyrics and a great stage presence from all of the band meant gothic visuals were a must for Sable Dawn.

This is just one of the great ideas for show defining visuals they came up with during an invigorating workshop.

We added the particles to what seemed a simple moody shot of each band member to make visually provocative loops for their show.

The Megaphones just having fun with animation during a visual workshop turned into one of their favourite clips duing the shows.
It doesn't have to be complicated or serious to be effective.

The Heretics made a large number of very effective 'shadow' plays on a projected green screen wall for keying during their shows.

Along with some excellent Flash loops and backgrounds from VJ Trip they also made a number of extended animations using the whole band.