Bazillion Pictures Animates Snapple's Interactive Journey

Visit the newly re-vamped Web site of niche beverage company Snapple and you can travel the world virtually, thanks to Kansas City-based Bazillion Pictures.

The 3D animation studio and visual effects business has animated a virtual world built around the different countries where the various ingredients in Snapple products originate.

The site has information about the five locations important to Snapple and its products: New York City, Africa, China, England and India.

New York is the home of Snapple while each of the others plays a key role in Snapple products in one way or another.

Bazillion became involved with Snapple thanks to another Kansas City business, interactive agency, VML, whose client, Cadbury Schweppes, is the parent company of the Snapple brand. The creative team at VML was the driving force behind the creation of the site.

Snethen said the Snapple site hadn't been updated in a significant way since it first went online earlier this decade, and was in desperate need of a facelift.

The overriding goal for the site, said Bazillion's Stephen Goldblatt, is to offer visitors fun in addition to information.

Together VML and Bazillion meticulously researched the look for the site collecting research materials such as artwork, photos as well as specific information about the ingredients that go into the various teas.

From there Bazillions creative staff used various 3D techniques to bring the worlds to life.

Bazillion's entire team of nine employees worked on the site at some point or another.

Their expertise in animation notwithstanding, having a few who had traveled to some of the places in Snapple World was helpful in the work, said Jeff Beith of Bazillion.

"For Africa and China, we had to rely on a lot of photographs," he said. "But we had employees between us and VML who'd been to New York and England, so those were easier."

Snapple has made some changes to its products to appeal to younger tea drinkers, so it wanted a more interactive site that would appeal to them as well, Beith said.