Insight
2026-02-02
Slop is so 2025. Real craft is back in 2026.
Every studio runs on two timelines. There’s the neat one: decks approved, files delivered, everything landing exactly where it should. Then there’s the real one: tape on the floor, foam everywhere, someone saying “this might be a terrible idea” just before it turns into the thing everyone gets excited about.
That’s the timeline people remember.
In our team, we’ve worked on plenty of technically solid projects. Tight pipelines. Sensible decisions. Everything worked as planned. This way of going about things does what it’s meant to do and does it well.
But the work that sticks with teams and with audiences is nearly always the work where we take things out of the computer and put them back in again. Stuff like live shoots, stop motion, frame by frame animation. The kind of work you do with real materials, real constraints, and real problem solving.
THE TRADE-OFF
Sure, those projects are chaotic. More labour intensive in places. Louder. And yet, without question, they’re more fun not only to create, but also to watch.
Internally, they come with stories. Like the time a Creative Director nearly set the studio on fire. Or when a Producer dropped a hero prop seconds before the camera rolled. Or the moment we decided to build an entire set out of cake and chocolate, realised chocolate looks awful close up and under lights, and had to pull in Dolph Souza to 3D print and hand paint everything.
Steve Jobs used to talk about how the journey is the reward. He was right. The upload is not always the best part; the making is. The ideas. The creative discussions. The fixes. The moment something finally clicks after hours of not working.
Externally, none of that shows up in the final export. Not in an obvious way. But that’s the thing about craft-led projects: the process leaves a residue. A sense of effort, care, risk. Audiences pick up on it instantly. Even if they can’t explain why, they know they’re watching something special; and, down the line, that reflects in real, tangible engagement for brands.
REAL CRAFT MAKES GAMING AUDIENCES LEAN IN
This way of thinking sits at the centre of how we've often worked with games for those key roadmap moments, because gaming audiences are different.
They care about the process. They notice effort. They want to be close to the work. When you show them how something is made, they don’t lose interest; they lean in. That’s why craft-led projects translate so well in this space.
We saw it clearly with Boom Beach, where we helped them unveil a global birthday campaign with a giant cake and a miniature diorama. The final piece mattered, of course, but the behind the scenes footage carried just as much weight for audiences. Watching the work come together, seeing hands on materials, seeing problems get solved in real time... It all made the final film feel earned rather than simply delivered.
THERE’S MAGIC IN THE EFFORT
We take inspiration from craft projects everywhere, but the point is never to admire them from a distance. It’s to bring those principles directly into gaming.
Apple’s recent Apple TV ident work is a good reference for us. Not because it sits outside games, but because it proves something creatives and audiences know: when something that could have been made entirely in CG is reverse engineered and built fully in camera, the effort becomes the magic. The behind the scenes almost becomes the ad itself.
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©Apple, 2025. |
That idea maps perfectly onto how game communities think. Brawlimation is probably the clearest example of that for us.
For Supercell’s Brawl Stars, we created a 30-second frame by frame animation designed like a colourless colouring book. Then we handed it over to the community and asked them to help us colour in every single frame. Granted, there were thousands of submissions per frame, and it was a logistical nightmare from start to finish. But it was worth it.
The final video garnered over 3 million views, and over 11,000 comments. The craft wasn’t limited to the animation itself. It lived in the process, the invitation, and the trust placed in the audience. It’s a piece of work that wasn’t just watched by the community; it was owned by it.
THE BALANCE IS THE POINT
What I’m vouching for here isn’t nostalgia. It’s not about rejecting new tools or slowing everything down for the sake of it. Every era gets faster: pipelines tighten, tools improve. That’s healthy.
But right now, we’re surrounded by work that arrives fully formed. Clean. Instant. Endless. And because of that, anything that shows friction stands out. And as everything speeds up, effort starts to stand out again. Time spent becomes visible, and craft becomes a signal of intent.
New tools belong in that system too. Just not at the centre of the story. They clear the heavy lifting. They remove friction. They give teams room to focus on taste, judgment, story, and execution.
That balance is the point.
Because the part people connect with isn’t the delivery date. It’s the making. And in games, maybe more than anywhere else, the journey is still the reward, for makers and for audiences.