The challenge
Jewelry Depot Houston is a family jewelry business. Alon was helping his parents run it from abroad and wanted to turn the website into more of an experience. As he put it on our first call, the competition is enormous and you have to up your game. His reference was the Audemars Piguet website: simple, beautiful visuals where the product speaks for itself, with clean backgrounds and a little movement.
The pieces were worth thousands of dollars, and he did not want to ship them. The only pictures he had came out of a lightbox app: over-processed, low resolution, with the prongs and stones blurred together.
The process
We asked for new photos instead of a photographer: the same iPhone, next to a window in daylight, on a sheet of white paper, as close as possible, using macro mode. Everything went into a shared brief deck with the nine signature pieces, mood references and the client's notes, including a question about a light baby-blue or grey background and a frame with the company motto, "In pursuit of perfection".
Every model was checked against the reference photos before it moved on. We matched the diamond counts, added thickness to the metal, made the prongs smaller, turned a square part oval and made sure the pieces fitted together without overlapping. The link bracelet took the most back and forth, to make the links bend properly. Only then did the models get their metal and diamond materials and go into the animation.
The outcome
The final animation was delivered on 21 December 2023 in three formats: 16:9 for website banners and screens, 9:16 for mobile and stories, and 1:1 for social posts. The wide and vertical versions also came with the logo.
No piece left the shop for a photoshoot, and nothing needed cleaning of dust or fingerprints. The 3D models stay with the project, so the same pieces can be used again for new images and animations.
