We loved the magical and immersive world of animation so much last year that we decided to utilize that medium again for 2021. (Besides, 2021 felt like an extension of 2020 anyway, so it only felt right.) While the medium is the same, the entire look and feel of the card is vastly different – almost opposite! We left the quaint mountain town from 2020 and “teletransported” to a whole new futuristic city in 2021! Reintroducing our pal Jan Paul Kaim.
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.
What do you envision the future to be like? Will you fly to work in a jet pack? Will you visit another planet? It’s fun to think about, right? That’s what we were able to do while creating this year’s card! If you dream it, JPK can create it through design and animation (see the images and videos below). What a wild ride! And he still likes to break out the old pencil and paper when creating too (check out the sketches below). One thing we found amusing is that the futuristic world somehow feels nostalgic. That’s where the theme of this year’s card came into play! Many things can change in the future, but the important ones remain the same – like giving back, sharing memories with loved ones, and watching Wolf Greenfield holiday card videos.
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. The 3D meshes are brought to life by animating their 3D attributes — position, scale and rotation. For complex human movement, JPK used a motion capture system to turn himself into a full-size puppet — his movements were recorded at his main joints and then applied to the 3D 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 gingerbread house. 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, snow was 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.
What’s a Wolf Greenfield holiday card without some hidden gems? Staying true to the Wolf Greenfield spirit, technology and innovation are at the forefront. There are more inventions within this card than we can name – all of which would need IP protection!
◼️ Our 2018 snowman holiday card is playing on the big billboard when you enter the city.
◼️ The children at WG Elementary are going to learn IP 101 because you can never be too young to learn about the importance of intellectual property!
◼️ The robot from our 2017 holiday card is art in the house scene at the end.
