FlyLo’s friends at Adult Swim animate the rap avatar’s origin story.

Since emerging in 2012, Captain Murphy — the rap alias of Flying Lotus — has existed as an animated avatar in short films and videos. With Captain Murphy’s album seemingly on the back-burner, fans of FlyLo’s pitched-down rap antics will have to settle for this video, which was released by Adult Swim and illustrated by Adam Fuchs.

“The short is that it’s the prelude to what Murphy could be. He’s in this world now and it could just set it up for anything,” Fuchs tells Noisey. “I wanted to do a short that was relatable to people where they could watch it and get more out of it than some pretty psychedelic visuals, there’s more substance to this thing.”

“From the Adult Swim side, Captain Murphy is a fascinating character. Adam and I and Steve [Ellison, aka Flying Lotus] always felt that there should be an idea that this is only his most recent incarnation,” Adult Swim’s Jason DeMarco. “He’s like a character or a force that you can tell a lot of stories with, and he doesn’t just have to always be this thing. He’s more than a man.”

As you may know, Flying Lotus’ relationship with Adult Swim dates back to his stint as the man behind the network’s bumper music; Captain Murphy takes his name from a Sealab 2012 character, and it certainly sounds like we could be seeing more of him on Adult Swim in the future. Until then, he appears — with Herbie Hancock, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg and others — on FlyLo’s forthcoming You’re Dead LP.