The new London agency who brought animation and character to a New York curio.

Next time you visit NYC, you may want to visit the Sloomoo Institute for the bragging rights.

Based in Manhattan and founded in 2019, the colourful establishment is the world’s first ever slime museum, aiming at that increasingly less-niche demographic of ASMR lovers and kids with ‘kidult’ parents. It was also one of the first ever assignments for UK agency Oskar Illustration, who got surreal Swedish 3D artist Anton Hjertstedt to help turn Sloomo’s 2D brand identity into something as thick and colourful as the gooey stuff.

You may remember Anton’s playful figures for a viral creative personality test from last year, and his Sloomoo work carries similarly fun vibes.

“We were asked to create animations that really showcased the glorious world of slime in all of its oozy glory on social and web,” explains Oskar founder Oli Roberts about the Sloomoo brief. “We also made a typographic logo, brand character and a general slime treatment.”

“In a way, it was a perfect brief for Oskar Illustration as we were asked to ideate and collaborate right from the get-go. It was very much a case of ‘we love the work Anton created for Coal Drops Yard, as well as the way he experiments with materials and textures, so we’ll leave it in your capable hands to explore.’ 

“While we respected the font and character shape supplied, it was amazing to be given the freedom to explore texture and visual treatments. It was a joyous project to work on with numerous ‘out there’ conference call conversations along the way.”

“I created three different animations all based on elements from the Sloomoo brand, Anton elaborates. “One focused on their character, another was a 360° view of what it’d be like to have your head inside some morphing slime, and the last was a treatment of their logo.

“Ultimately, I wanted to capture the different qualities of the slime. It had to feel mushy, gushy, colourful and tactile. Slime can exist is so many different states, textures and materials so this was another important part to it.”

“My textures were all made digitally,” Anton continues. “I took a lot of inspiration from different types of slime that exist in real life and went from there.

“Some slime has a shiny and metallic feel, others have hundreds of different colourful balls inside of them. So, it was mostly a case of taking these examples from real life and pushing it a bit further within the 3D program, morphing and deforming it to help make it a bit hyper-real and fun.”

“I had loads of fun in the initial stages of the brief where I got to experiment and create all these different scenes of the character interacting with blobs of slime and the blobs of slime themselves behaving in mischievous ways.

“At the same time this was also the trickiest, as trying to create this thick and viscous slime-like fluid in 3D and also to have it behave like it existed in real life was somewhat complicated.”

And is Anton now a slime fan himself?

“BIG fan!” he responds enthusiastically.

Related: How do you brand ASMR without sound?

https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/graphic-design/branding-slime-museum-doesnt-have-get-sticky/