Christmas Wall – HOK-Elanto & Anima Boutique

After the very successful Interactive Painting project with HOK-Elanto we definitely wanted to continue developing for their media wall and make something cool for Christmas. Previous year the wall was introduced with a beautiful and fun animated Christmas calendar by Anima Boutique. They were planning to do a new calendar, using the same adorable characters and we saw an opportunity for collaboration! So, we joined forces and shared ideas about creating a new interactive Christmas wall and the best way to do it. The layout and characters were pretty clear for Anima’s guys right from the start, and after some test rounds we started to learn the best kind of interactions that could be used here.

The wall contains a couple of different interactions. The background and characters are separated to layers and there are some non-interactive animations in the background. When a user stands in front of the wall and reaches for it, a hand cursor indicates users hand position and star particles burst to indicate when a hotspot is touched. There are basic action animations that start when a hotspot is hit, like a choir that starts to sing. There are also more dynamic animations, like a cat trying to catch the cursor or a bear going faster and faster on a rocking chair. There are also many small and fun details to be found!

In order to spread the word and let more people to know about the Christmas Wall, we designed and created a site to promote it. The site gathers all the different services and applications built around the Christmas Wall and Anima’s characters. On the site, people can choose a character for the greeting card and write their own text for it. The greeting card can then be sent to friends on Facebook and Twitter and by email.

The Christmas Wall was located on the corner of Sokos in the Helsinki city center, and it was displayed in December 2012. The successful experience was repeated again in December 2013.