One bottle.A year of social.
Builders Botanical Gin, built once in 3D and dropped into a new world every season: a meadow for summer, a lake dock, a campfire for fall and a cave for Halloween. Each world was framed and rendered for every format it ran in. Made at Whiskey Design for Restless Spirits Distilling in Kansas City.
A Kansas City gin, a new world every season.
Restless Spirits makes Builders Botanical Gin in North Kansas City, named for the founders' immigrant builder ancestors and led by lavender and citrus. In 2019 it became the official gin of the Boston Red Sox. Through 2022, Whiskey Design produced a run of seasonal animated posts for it, all in 3D.
Every post uses the same label-accurate 3D bottle, modelled and textured in April 2022, with a new set built around it each time. The bottle and its cocktails carry from world to world, so the feed reads as one brand while each post looks new. Earlier that spring, the week before St Patrick's Day, Mason made a spot for the distillery's Sons of Erin Irish whiskey.
- Client
- Restless Spirits Distilling, North Kansas City, Missouri
- Products
- Builders Botanical Gin; Sons of Erin Irish Whiskey
- Agency
- Whiskey Design, Kansas City
- Deliverables
- Five animated social spots in 4:5, 9:16 and square, each format framed on its own, plus a GIF of every spot
- Tools
- Cinema 4D, Redshift, OpenVDB fire and fog
Built once. Lit four ways.
The same model in daylight, overcast lake light, golden-hour fire and cold blue cave light. The same model, label and glass go into every set; the world and the light change around them.
The label, exactly.
The label went onto the bottle from the brand's print files. Separate masks drive the gold foil, the two greens and the cream paper, so the foil catches light like foil and the paper stays matte. The tamp strip over the cap was built the same way.
That's why the label reads as print in every set, from a sunlit close-up to a silhouette in the cave.
Summer: the botanicals, grown up around it.
The first world plays straight off the label. Builders is a botanical gin, so the bottle stands in a meadow of flowering herbs with two finished cocktails. It's the most literal set of the year.
Summer, part two: the dock.
A weathered dock, a lake and blue hills behind. The purple gin and tonic takes the lead here and comes back at the campfire, along with the lime. With the background held soft and cool, the green bottle and the purple drink do the work.
Rendered at 4:5 for the feed; 10.4 s in the delivered cut.
Fall: golden hour and a real fire.
The lake comes back at sunset. A volumetric fire cache burns behind the bottle, so the glow and the smoke move through the frame with the bottle instead of sitting on top as an overlay. The warm rim light turns the dark-green glass almost amber.
The set started as a quick test in June and became the fall post three months later. The story and feed versions were framed separately; see As shipped.
Halloween: the same bottle, in the dark.
The hardest light of the year. The bottle is backlit by the cave mouth, fog rolls across the floor, candles flicker and bats pass outside. The props stay playful: an eyeball garnish in the martini and cobwebs on the glass.
Five test passes and six scene versions between September 27 and October 12, delivered October 20.
St Patrick's: a snake comes back for the whiskey.
Legend says St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. For the distillery's Sons of Erin Irish whiskey, one comes back: a green snake with shamrock scales coils up the bottle and rises over the cap, inside an engraved frame.
The snake started as a stock rigged model. It was re-textured with the shamrock scale pattern and animated to coil around this bottle.
Framed for the feed, not cropped for it.
Each world went out with its own line, in each format it ran in. The story and feed versions are framed separately, with the bottle and the line re-composed for each, rather than one master cropped two ways.
| Spot | Feed | Stories | Other | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sons of Erin | 1080×1350 | / | 1200² square, GIF | 15 s |
| Botanical meadow | 1080×1350 | / | 1200² square, GIF, 13.4 s long cut | 9.5 s |
| Lake dock | 1080×1350 | / | GIF | 10.4 s |
| Campfire | 1080×1350 | 1080×1920 | GIF | 8.7 s |
| Cave | 1080×1350 | 1080×1920 | GIF | 8.8 s |
Need a bottle that works every season? Start a project ↗