Peter Gabriel appeared in the 1985 music video for Sledgehammer, famous for its stop-motion effects.
The video places Gabriel in a series of surreal visual scenes involving clay animation, pixilation, animated food, dancing objects, and rapidly changing transformations. Instead of presenting a conventional band performance, it builds a playful visual world that responds to the song’s energetic arrangement.
Stephen R. Johnson directed the video, working with several animation teams. The production used multiple techniques, including stop motion and clay animation, and required Gabriel to remain still for long periods during some sequences. The result became one of the most celebrated and heavily awarded music videos of the 1980s.
Gabriel is the singer and on-screen performer, while the visual effects were created through animation and painstaking frame-by-frame work. That distinction matters because the video’s imaginative imagery can make it seem as though Gabriel himself created all the effects.