An immersive website translates the wonder and thrill of exploration for international audiences
Our goal for the international website for Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's The Adventures of Tintin was to create an experience that positioned the film as an adventure for the whole family. Since the heart of The Adventures of Tintin rests in its characters and the exotic locations they visit, we brought users to the far corners of the globe with full-screen action sequences as they searched for sunken ships and lost treasure.
INTERNATIONAL WEBSITE
Weaving film animation into site navigation, users are thrown into the cockpit of an airplane with Tintin, flying over an expansive ocean and traveling to virtual regions of the globe while they discover EPK content from the film. With each destination, users are treated to a brief scene from the film before uncovering character dialogue hotpots, trailers, photos, bonus features and links to mobile content. Building the website, we encountered the challenge of creating high quality, seamless video loops which could play at random while managing the file size.
Blending the interactive cockpit with the 3D perspectives and video sequences was a significant achievement crucial to pushing the cinematic experience while retaining optimal performance. The result was a user experience befitting of the high-flying adventures of Tintin.
Sound design is integral to an immersive experience, so we used score selections from the trailer and crafted an audio loop while layering in sound effects of seagulls, foghorns and wind to prevent the track from sounding repetitive. We also pulled audio of an old model biplane and added layering to make the engine sound unstable and capable of failing at any time, heightening the sense of peril.
From the cinematic, full-size video transitions to the commentaries from Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, users have lauded this site as an incredibly entertaining, interactive experience. The real indicator of the site's success, however, was not just from the praise it received from users. Since we produced the site for the international release of the film, we designed it to be localized in multiple territories. The true success of the site was evident in the ability of each territory to host and manage it in their local language, installing unique tracking to measure the performance on a local level.
The Adventures of Tintin international website was featured as FWA's "Site of the Day".
Visit the siteUnicorn Quest
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In addition to immersive EPK features, we also designed the Unicorn Quest for users to enjoy. This game challenges players to uncover the secret of the unicorn by casting off with Tintin on a nautical quest for hidden items.
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Players are given a compass and must navigate a ship with their mouse and keyboard through ocean currents, avoiding any obstructions that could cause damage to the ship. Points are awarded based on the player’s knack for speed and steering.
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Mobile
The technical achievement in the production of The Adventures of Tintin represented the latest advancement in motion capture filmmaking. Since this achievement was a key message in the marketing campaign, our work also needed to underscore that same digital expertise. One of the ways we accomplished this was through our replication of the desktop experience on mobile devices. We built our immersive website in Flash, so our mobile developers used that site as a point of reference and drew from those assets to recreate the same immersive experience on a tablet. This strategy ensured international audiences would be able to experience the wonder of exploration of The Adventures of Tintin wherever their own adventures took them.
The site presented a cinematic experience of the film to fans around the world as Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson's film earned over $300 million internationally.