Background
Back in December 2021, the management team at Eon Visual Media wanted to share a festive Christmas message for stakeholders and staff. However, due to the ongoing concerns with the Coronavirus pandemic, the management team were unable to do this in-person and instead needed to create a short video message to share their festive wishes. We decided to explore a new way of getting into the Christmas spirit using festive augmented reality to create a Christmas video message!
Aims & Objectives
At the start of this project, the team met to discuss the overall aims and objectives and brainstorm various creative ideas. In addition to sharing a festive message, it was agreed that the video would also act as an opportunity to flare our creative muscles and demonstrate additional innovative digital services at Eon Visual Media.
One creative option which the videography team considered was the possibility of incorporating additional CGI and postproduction animations into the video message. However, whilst these methods would have added a highly engaging element to the video, these were quickly dismissed due to the expensive, complicated, and time-consuming nature of these methods.
As an alternative, the development team concluded that it would be far more efficient to instead create an engaging, festive augmented reality experience, which would incorporate animated 3D models under a Christmas theme. The video would then feature our management team engaging and interacting with these festive 3D assets as part of the video message.
Augmented Reality Development
To create our festive augmented realty experience, our development team download a variety of pre-made stock 3D models from TurboSquid. From here our team were able to download static models of Santa Claus, a sleigh, and a Christmas tree.
To help add an extra element of interactivity, our development team also utilised Mixamo to help bring the static 3D models to life. By using this technique, this allowed our 3D model of Santa to burst into life and bust out his finest dance moves!
With our festive 3D assets ready, our development team used Reality Composer to create our festive augmented reality experience. This experience would be compatible with iOS devices and could be captured from a screen recording of an iPhone.
Recording the Festive Message
Once the augmented reality experience was created, it was now time for our festive video message to be recorded. For the video message, our original intention was to capture our Managing Director Matt Dass delivering a festive speech at our Office Christmas Party whilst interacting with our augmented 3D assets. However, due to the outbreak of the Omicron variant and rapidly increasing cases of Coronavirus in the UK, the Eon Visual Media Christmas Party and video shoot in the office were postponed. As a last-minute alternative, our videography team agreed that it would be amusing to instead record Matt Dass in a contrasting empty office and add a comedic tone to the overall festive message.
After recording our festive augmented reality video message, this was then shared and distributed with stakeholders across our website, email newsletters, and various social media channels. Upon its release, our video was incredibly well received and highly praised for its creativity and comical tone. You can watch our final festive video message here! 👈
Summary
At Eon Visual Media, we firmly believe that augmented reality will soon become an essential part of every marketing mix. With this, our friendly team of developers can collaborate with you to develop a highly interactive and engaging augmented reality experience to help promote your brand, products, and services.
For over 10 years, our team of experts have helped to develop apps for some of the UK’s largest B2B and B2C businesses, turning their ideas into reliable and robust pieces of technology. Want to find out more? Drop us a message, and we would love to chat to you about your idea!