UncommonGoods is sending something special to your inbox this weekend, something our Creative team has worked very hard on and we can’t be more excited. For the past couple weeks, our email designers have taken a step away from their Wacom tablets and Adobe Suite to build this email by hand.
When the Creative team was talking over the Holiday email plan they got on a nostalgic tangent on classic Christmas shows and their memorable characters – Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, the Island of Misfit Toys, Heat Miser and Yukon Cornelius. Add a deep love of animated gifs and stop-motion photography, and the enticing chance to play with clay all day – and our clay animation email was born with a shareable video close in tow.
Normally our emails take a couple days to create – designs are hand-drawn and scanned, photos are taken of products and textures – and are primarily done on a computer. But this email required building a set and sculpting individual figures that took 4-5 hours each to create. It was an all-hands-on-deck experience with every team member getting involved.
“We turned our conference table into to a craft station and had piles of clay and tools to work with”, says Gaby Germaine, Associate Creative Director. “We had photographers, designers and copywriters all making different elements. Then once all the items were constructed we created the snowy home for everyone.”
Once the design of the email was complete, photographer Adam and graphic designer Hanna got to work on the animated video with input from the entire team as to what figures would be moving and talking. “The studio was literally filled with smiles and laughter during this whole process and had so many visitors from around the company stop by multiple times just to see what was going on. We have not even had the heart to take down the set yet,” says Gaby.
We hope you love it as much as the Creative team enjoyed making it and the rest of our team enjoyed watching. And for your pure entertainment, here is the video starring our little clay stars.
http://youtu.be/N_01tb_I5Gw
