BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Having spent years developing his storytelling voice in the entertainment industry, Jan Paul Kaim (JPK) uses live action, animation and innovation to bring stories to life. When creating with JPK, story always comes first. “Only by honoring the story from start to finish can we produce meaningful, memorable experiences,” according to JPK. From Broadway to broadcast, JPK has worked on a vast range of high-profile productions over the last decade. Some examples of past clients include ABC, Audible, BMW, Bose, Dell, Disney, Food Network, Google, NBC, Panera Bread, Saucony and The Radio City Rockettes.

THE PROCESS

Envision an enchanting, whimsical place. That’s how this card started out. From there, the concept was storyboarded and the alternate reality was brought to life with design and animation. Behind this immersive media is both the latest technology (Don’t miss the 3D wireframes!) and good old fashioned pencil and paper (Check out some of JPK’s sketches!). 

Each scene was first sketched to define the compositions and block the main beats of the visual story. The world was then modeled in 3D to provide digital sculptures of the world, props and characters. From there, the meshes were surfaced (applying textures and materials to the 3D meshes). In the surfacing phase, objects take on their color and physical properties like the reflections of metal or the patterned "bumpiness" of a wool sweater. The last step in the 3D pipeline is to light the scene using digital lights to give a sense of space, direction and depth. Once the 3D scenes are rendered, they are processed one final time in the compositing phase where final touches, corrections and enhancements are added. For this holiday card, clouds and snow were added in the compositing phase to have granular control of the environments at the end of the process. Next up is music and sound design, where an audioscape is built to match the visuals, taking the realism of the animated world a lot further. 

As with many things in real life, the details are what make this alternate reality so special. Staying true to the Wolf Greenfield spirit, technology and innovation are at the forefront. Notice the CookieBot 3000 is a registered trademark? Can you feel the creativity that went into delivering food by train to maintain social distance at the dinner table? And what would an alternate reality be without magic? How do the little planes driving the balloons delivering cookies get to each house? We’ll leave that up to your imagination! All of the above steps in their specific order — referred to as the "workflow" — come together to result in a rich world that hopefully feels real despite only existing digitally. In the final product, the moments are real — in the minds and hearts of the viewers.

DID YOU NOTICE? 

This year’s holiday card has nods to Wolf Greenfield cards of the past. Did you see the gingerbread cookie from our 2019 card? How about the snowman from 2018? Or the robot from 2017? 

We think the process is as cool as the final product, so we wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how it came together.