A Digital Christmas

Japanese financial conglomerate the Nomura group contacted us about ideas for a digital Christmas card for 2009. They were looking for something a little bit special, something that would turn heads yet retain corporate professionalism. Of course, we had just the solution for them.

Concept

Their corporate branding is a silhouette skyline of iconic buildings from around the world. We took this theme and re-imagined it as a children's popup book with a Christmas twist.

Design

The design team began work on the look and feel. It was important that we got across a sense of lighthearted fun without making it too cartoony, and after a bit of experimentation we settled on a semi-realistic illustration style that struck a good balance between the two. After that our time was spent making sure that the overall scene felt quintessentially Christmas. We achieved this by setting a night sky as the backdrop, and adding a dash of falling snow.

Tech

From our previous experience with Papervision, or with any real-time 3D production for that matter, it is crucial to nail the pipeline first. Working out the limitations and unique quirks of how the API reads 3D data is very important, nothing else can start until a solid and reliable export method is established. Once that was accomplished, it was just a case of iterating until we got it just right.