Merry Pixels - SNFCC Xmas 2021

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For anyone who knows us, they most probably know SNFCC as well…

For those who don't, please have a look at the short description below:

“SNFCC stands for Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center located in Athens Greece. It is a cultural center which attracts visitors from all around the country.

Christmas is a very special period for SNFCC, as thousands of people visit it to celebrate Christmas. “

So for the 5th(!!) time in a row, we created a Christmas World for SNFCC.

Here you can see the 2017's Campaign, 2018's Campaign 2019's and 2020’s Campaign!

But this year, the whole campaign was a game!

So sit back, relax and switch your gamer mode on!

Back in February 2019, we bought an arcade cabin for our office STRAIGHT FROM THE 80s!

We started discovering and playing all those fabulous 8 bit games again!

We had a warm and cozy feeling as we were remembering our moments as children.

All those hours in front of an arcade cabin, playing or squeezing between friend’s shoulders.

And then we had this idea!
The cozy feeling when you play old video games and watch pixel art in general, is pretty much the same amazing feeling during Christmas. Feeling like a kid again, who badly wants to wake up on Christmas Eve and play your favorite video game on an Atari or a Nintendo.

So our proposal to SNFCC was to create the whole campaign of Christmas, as an 8bit SNFCC Christmas word!

Like every year, the campaign would start with a 30 days countdown during November, by producing one short video for every day, counting down to the 1st of December which is the start of the festive season in the cultural center.

We transformed the architecture and the people into pixels and we started telling a different story everyday.

For some days we created videos as different levels of the same video game which continues.

We started exploring the best dimension of the pixel canvas to make our designs.

We wanted to keep them simple on a small aspect ratio canvas in order to look like an old game.

On the other hand, having less detail created a challenge as we had to figure out the best way to give specific characteristics to our design but at the same time be minimal.

So we chose 128X128 pixel aspect ratio and designed everything on this canvas

We started making some first rough sketches of the characters and the building which is really iconic.

We tried to keep them minimal and bold. A confusing part was the fact that even the sketches had less detail and it was hard to imagine them on pixels before designing them.

For the scripts we wanted them to have video game elements but also elements drawn from the internet culture like the nyan cat, that massive pop internet phenomenon and of course the thug life glasses.

Once again we designed a bounce of different characters. We wanted diversity so we came up with trance-gender characters of all nations and ages and of course some animal characters.

Animation also needed to have a specific reference to 8bit games aesthetic.

We used a low frame rate and a movement similar to the very first video games. (We closely studied our beloved Mario animation sprites).

Every character movement had to be created frame by frame and for that we used our ipads for pixel frame by frame magic ;)

Apart from the 30 short videos of the countdown, we produced tv spots, led screens videos, elements for the live streaming and bunch of different edits and formats for this campaign.

We also created a small game in unity. But like, really small!

Take a look at an edit below with some moments.

Every Year, this universe we create for SNFCC, transforms into a Christmas identity for the cultural center. Characters and elements decorate the website and all the social media accounts of SNFCC. We see our designs applied to a bunch of different materials. Like buses, bus stations, catalogues, ornaments, balloons,posters and many others.

Thank you guys for making it to the end of our Merry Pixels project. Big shout out to SNFCC for the trust they showed us for the 5th year in a row and to the amazing people who worked on this project.

P.S. Drop us a line for ideas for next year’s 6th-in-a-row campaign. What would you like to see? Merry Christmas to you all!

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Client: SNFCC (Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center)

Created by: Odd Bleat

Creative Direction / Art Direction: Yannis Zoumakis, Manos Gerogiannis

Illustrations: Yannis Zoumakis, Spyros Loran, Agela Patsiada

Animation: Manos Gerogiannis, Spyros Loran, Agela Patsiada, Stefanos Pletsis

Production: Marianna Papachristodoulou

Music, Sound Design, Mixing and Mastering : MD Recording Studios, Nikos Michalodimitrakis

Graphic Design: Bend