Kia Experience

Kia Motors is a global automotive manufacturer headquartered in South Korea, recognized for designing and producing vehicles sold worldwide. Beyond its automotive work, Kia invests in cultural and lifestyle initiatives that highlight creativity, diversity, and community. For the holiday season, Kia commissioned an interactive digital showcase celebrating multicultural holidays and traditions from around the world.

Our role

The centerpiece of this campaign was a custom 3D animation designed to embody the excitement leading up to holiday season. The brief called for a bokeh-style visualization of floating, multicolored holiday lights that would dynamically evolve in intensity as each holiday approached.

Our role included:

• Ground-up design and development of the animation engine in Three.js and Blender.
• Mathematical modeling of bokeh light behavior and particle dynamics.
• Integration of a countdown system that progressively increased animation complexity and vibrancy as holidays neared.
• Delivery of both the interactive microsite animation and a browser extension that redirected new tabs to the experience.

Animation design & challenges

Bokeh lights & particle dynamics

• No existing libraries provided the visual fidelity we needed, so the bokeh simulation was engineered from scratch.
• Each particle had properties for size, opacity, blur, and color blending, respecting additive color rules.
• A twinkle effect was introduced through rapid on/off opacity cycling, simulating star-like sparkle.

Motion model

We combined two factors to achieve natural, evolving motion:

• Linear radial vectors (particles moving outward from origin).
• Organic / Brownian motion (snow-like drifting, subtle randomness).

The ratio of these two forces shifted over time: early in the countdown, motion was calm and wandering; as the holiday approached, the linear component dominated, making particles more energetic and directional.

Performance engineering

• As the countdown intensified, more particles, higher frame rates, and increased brightness were layered in.
• Careful optimization was required to ensure smooth performance across browsers, including memory management and GPU load balancing.
• Variables such as particle count, blur levels, and update intervals were tuned to ramp up visual excitement without compromising playability.

Browser extension component

Alongside the animation, we delivered a lightweight browser extension (Chrome/Firefox):

• Each new tab automatically redirected users to Kia’s holiday microsite.
• This ensured the experience was surfaced repeatedly during the campaign period.

Key outcomes

The result of the project was an immersive seasonal showcase that successfully combined art and engineering, featuring a bespoke 3D animation system that evolved precisely in step with real-world holiday countdowns and employed a thoughtful multicultural framing that celebrated multiple holiday traditions with equal emphasis. This performant, browser-agnostic build demonstrated how complex 3D rendering and particle math could be applied effectively to brand storytelling, underscoring Kia’s position as a company that values creativity, inclusivity, and innovation, while simultaneously allowing us the opportunity to push Three.js and Blender into new territory by engineering a unique particle system from the ground up.