Festive fun: our Christmas site for clients featuring 3D Santa

Here at TWK we were feeling particularly festive this year, and wanted to spread some additional cheer in the way we know best… a website. We assembled a small squad to brainstorm ideas on a Christmas-themed site with one simple goal: to bring a smile to the face of anyone who visits it. 

It all started at a pub close to our office, where we began to scope out the project. Lots of ideas were thrown around including a client Christmas jumper design competition, amongst many others. After much deliberation, we decided to tell a short and light-hearted Christmas story. Settling on the narrative came fairly quickly, when someone cited a recent news story which declared the world’s population had officially hit 8 billion people. Naturally, this lead to the question… how will Santa visit that many people? After all, his reindeers will eventually tire.

We agreed to explore the idea of using a 3D Santa and giving him a jetpack to help him get around and save the reindeers. Through a quick Google we sourced some 3D assets online: a Santa and amazingly a jetpack too. We then compiled these assets in Blender, fixing the jetpack to his back.

One tricky part of the process was rigging Santa’s body, allowing us to reposition his limbs so that he could hold the handles of the jetpack. Once the asset setup was concluded, the design team began creating the story-board. In doing so, we realised the initial population based storyline felt a little heavy given our aim to be light-hearted so instead we decided to abbreviate the narrative to explain that there was a case of reindeer flu, resulting in Santa’s reindeers being too poorly to help with Christmas deliveries. We were able to make this much more concise, allowing for a more easy going experience for our audience.

Once the full storyboard was reviewed and agreed, we handed it over to our Senior Developer Matteo along with the 3D assets to bring it all to life. Both the design and development team worked closely together and before we knew it the vision was complete, with all the bells and whistles included.

The final addition was to allow visitors to the site to put in their own Christmas message and send their customised version onto new recipients. To see the full live site, please click the following link: www.thewebkitchen.co.uk/xmas/ 

Overall, the process was a great success as we got lots of great feedback from recipients saying it certainly did bring a smile to their face. We had great fun working on it whilst also learning lots of new skills which we hope to start bringing into client projects. More importantly, we were able to send our clients an awesome showcase of what we can do and spread some Christmas cheer along the way.

If you’re interested to find out how the power of 3D can make a difference to your website, please get in touch.

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