The Intrepid Wendell · 3D ring animation · 2021–2022

From a pencil line to the ring itself.

An eight-second homepage film for a bespoke jeweller. The ring is drawn, cast, set and polished, then lands on the photograph of the real one.

The final film on the homepage green, 1200 × 1200, 8 s

The Intrepid Wendell is a bespoke jewellery atelier: every piece starts as a conversation and a drawing. For its 2022 homepage, I made a ring that tells that story by itself, from the first pencil line to the finished piece, in eight seconds and on a transparent background so it floats over the page.

Client: The Intrepid Wendell, bespoke jewellery
Studio: Whiskey Design, Kansas City
When: September 2021 – March 2022
My role: 3D modelling, look development, animation, rendering, edit, web delivery
Tools: Cinema 4D, Redshift, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, TexturePacker

01Key frames239 frames, 8 s

Eight frames, one ring.

The film follows the ring the way a jeweller makes one: drawn, inked, shaped in glass, stoned, cast, set, polished, and finally photographed. These are the eight turning points, each at full size and in the same crop, so only the material changes.

01/ 08

Sketch

Frame 26 · 0.87 s

Drawn line by line on a crosshair, construction lines left in.

02Drawn firstSep – Oct 2021

Before the metal, a drawing.

The film opens on a sheet labelled "Brutalist Ring" and draws the ring line by line on a crosshair. The early looks are separate passes over the same animation, a painted ink pass and a painted raw-metal pass, cut together in Premiere so the ring seems to change material mid-turn.

Handwritten pencil title reading Brutalist Ring. — The title on the sketch paper

A painted, ink-outlined version of the ring with stones arriving at the side. — Painted ink pass

A painterly version of the ring in dark raw metal with the stone channel filling. — Painted raw-metal pass

03The photographJan 2022

The last frame is the real ring.

The 3D ring was built and lit to match the studio photograph of the finished piece. Over the final second it eases into the photograph's exact pose and hands over, and the film holds on the photograph. A visitor sees a drawing become a real object they can commission.

The rendered ring in polished silver, slightly turned. — Render, frame 166

The photograph of the finished silver ring with an emerald-cut diamond and a channel of square stones. — Photograph, frames 196–238

Build, 5.7 sHandover, 0.8 sPhotograph, 1.4 s

04On the homepage2022

Treasures forged from the soul.

The ring ran as the homepage hero beside the atelier's promise, on desktop and on phones. It stayed there through 2022; the site has since moved to a photograph.

Desktop cut

Phone cut

05DeliveryJan – Mar 2022

A ring with no box around it.

The ring had to float over the page, not sit in a rectangle. It shipped as a transparent film twice over, because browsers disagree: HEVC with alpha for Safari and a VP9 WebM for everything else. These are those formats; change the ground behind it.

Frames: 239 at 29.97 fps, 1200 × 1200, RGBA
Safari: HEVC with alpha (.mov), March 2022
Other browsers: VP9 with alpha (.webm), January 2022
Also packed: PNG sprite sheets (TexturePacker), March 2022

One of six sprite sheets

06Credits

Credits

Client: The Intrepid Wendell
Studio: Whiskey Design, Kansas City
3D, animation and delivery: Mason Barry
Ring and photograph: The Intrepid Wendell

Made at Whiskey Design. The homepage was the client's; this page shows the film in place and does not claim the site design.