Holiday & Gifting Campaigns, Christmas · Valentine's · 11.11

Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's and Father's Day, Black Friday, Double Eleven and 6.18 are fixed dates, each with its own campaign.

I’ve made 3D films, key visuals and loops for all of them, including Qixi, the Chinese Valentine’s Day, and Double Eleven, also called Singles’ Day or 11.11.

These projects usually share the same constraints: a launch date that can’t move, a product presented in a gift box, and versions for every market and screen.

Christmas factory films

Several of these Christmas films are set in a factory where the gifts are assembled. For Balmain Beauty's Christmas 2024, working from Eiger's creative direction, I handled the art direction of the perfume factory and its lighting, and directed the animation and camera as robotic arms assemble the new fragrance.

For Messika's Art of Gifting, I directed the film and handled most of the camera work and the editing. Samuel Fiser designed, rigged and animated the mechanisms at its heart, and Jérémy Reveniaud ran the simulations.

Messika Art of Gifting, 3D Jewelry Animation

Valentine's Day and Qixi

Valentine's Day campaigns, and Qixi in China, usually feature a gift set or a limited edition. For Prada's Game of Love, I built a rig that tilts a heart-shaped labyrinth on several axes, like the classic tilting maze, so a metal ball rolls through it with real physics.

For Helena Rubinstein, procedural rigs animate the undulating ribbons of the box's signature design, and I handled the look development, lighting and compositing.

Prada Game of Love, Valentine's Day 2023

Helena Rubinstein Valentine's Day 2024, 3D Animation

SKII Valentine's Day 2023, SKII x White Rabbit

Black Friday, Double Eleven and 6.18

The shopping festivals need a large number of visuals. For Lancôme's Double Eleven, Velvet needed 3D backgrounds for dozens of key visuals: I set the layout, camera and framing of each one so the photographed bottles would drop cleanly into the sets. For 6.18, I built 3D replicas of Lancôme's products to match the angle and framing of all twenty key visuals, in scenes going from Paris in the morning to Shanghai at sunset.

For Black Friday, I delivered more than twenty 8K key visuals, each with and without the product.

Lancôme 6.18 Shopping Festival 2024, 3D Visuals & Animations

Parfums Christian Dior TMall Launch, 3D Product Animations

Gift boxes and limited editions

In gifting seasons, the campaign often shows the gift box or a limited edition. For SK-II's Hyper Festive limited editions, I directed and edited the films, and handled the shading, lighting and compositing that give the red and green bottles their glow. The project ran to 98 master files, covering every ratio and screen layout in SK-II stores.

For Lancôme's Idôle gifting box, a metal ball guides us through the box, revealing its design and the products inside part by part.

Lancôme Idole Gifting Box, 3D Product Animation

Parfums Christian Dior Valentine's Day 2018, 3D Product Animation

Mother's Day, Father's Day, one scene

Mother's Day and Father's Day often share one campaign. For Prada, Seiya turned the perfumes into robots that assemble and set off towards a gift box. Paradoxe led Mother's Day, Luna Rossa led Father's Day, and the line-ups, colours, lengths and ratios changed from cut to cut.

So I built the project on Cinema 4D's Take System: each shot renders in every configuration from a single scene, which turned a handful of setups into dozens of finished films.

Prada Mother & Father’s Days 2023, 3D Product Animation

Christmas on the web

Some holiday campaigns are made for the web. For Louis Vuitton's 2015 Christmas website, I directed more than thirty loopable animations built from still photographs: the team rebuilt the scenes in 3D with camera mapping, and I used 3D relighting so the images could move while keeping their photographic feel.

In 2013, I directed and animated, with Donald Simonet, more than forty GIFs for Louis Vuitton's digital game of the goose, one for each square on the board.

Louis Vuitton Christmas 2013 Animations, Motion Design

Louis Vuitton Christmas 2014, 3D Camera Mapping

What I deliver

Hero holiday films
Key visual backgrounds for product shoots
Social loops and GIFs
Versions for in-store screens
Gift box and limited-edition reveals
Versions for every market, product and ratio

Clients

Questions

Which occasions do you cover?

Christmas and the end-of-year holidays, Valentine's Day and Qixi (the Chinese Valentine's Day), Mother's and Father's Day, and the shopping festivals: Black Friday, Double Eleven (Singles' Day, 11.11) and 6.18. Chinese New Year has its own page.

Can you build the backgrounds for a real product shoot?

Yes. For Lancôme's Double Eleven, 6.18 and Black Friday, I set the layout, camera and framing of each 3D background, and built 3D replicas of the products, so the photographed bottles dropped cleanly into the sets.

How do you handle dozens of versions?

By planning them into the 3D setup. On Prada's Mother's and Father's Day campaign, Cinema 4D's Take System rendered every product and colour configuration from a single scene, and SK-II Hyper Festive ran to 98 master files for every ratio and screen.

When should a holiday campaign start?

As early as possible: Christmas and the shopping festivals are fixed dates, and design rounds and approvals take time. For a Christmas launch, a brief in late spring or summer is ideal.

Planning a holiday or gifting campaign?

Tell me about the date, the products and the formats you need.

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