Dear Santa Letter - Motion Graphics / Animation

This was a fun project. Julie Flahiff (Creative Director) wanted to create a means for users to send their Christmas wish lists to Santa via Smilebox. Susan Andrade, myself and Julie refined the concept further to include the ability for the users to receive customized responses from Santa as well. 

Susan and I designed an interface with some questions in drop-down menus as well as text boxes they could fill in. The could also add a photo or better yet, a video of the child telling Santa what they want. The idea is to create a great keepsake for the parents as well as something the grandparents and other relatives would really enjoy seeing. 

Once the user finishes with their list, adds in a photo or video, and makes a couple other customizations, they get a cinematic video of their list arriving at the north pole and being received in a whimsical mailroom. The shot ends on a contraption that is customized based on some of their selections and has a playback of their video included.  

Working closely with the dev team, I created a third part to this, the return letter from Santa. Our servers generate an animated return letter (a Flash swf) that is customized based on the previous questions and interactions. We delayed this response by a few days, but made sure all of them got sent out before Christmas. 

This was featured in the print and web edition of Time Magazine. 

http://techland.time.com/2010/12/07/send-your-video-wishlist-to-santa-with-smilebox/