Twas the Night Before Christmas (2025 Christmas Card Project)
This is part of my personal Christmas Card series that I create most years. For Christmas 2025 I finally went with an idea I’ve been thinking about for a long time, a play on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but with myself guiding Santa’s sleigh.
Usually my cards focus on one main 3D object with a few simple props or a basic environment. This year the idea needed three main characters: Santa, a reindeer, and Santa’s sleigh, plus a more detailed scene around them.
Early on I knew I wanted the style to feel similar to the classic stop motion Rudolph movie. As an environment artist I don’t have a lot (but some) experience with creatures, so this was a fun challenge and also part of why it took me a few years to finally tackle it.
I built all my initial meshes in 3ds Max, then brought Santa and the reindeer into Blender for sculpting. I have experience with ZBrush, but this was my first time sculpting in Blender, and it ended up being a really nice experience and a pipeline I want to explore more in future projects.
As I sculpted I found myself drifting away from a strict stop motion look and trying to land on my own style, something inspired by it but not a straight copy. A lot of my work over the years tends to lean slightly unsettling or spooky, so this was a good chance to push things in a cuter direction. And that reindeer butt… once I started sculpting I couldn’t resist making it a little thicker.
The sleigh is based on one I made for my first Christmas card many years ago, but I feel like this time I finally got it right.
All texturing was done in Substance Painter.
For the Unreal scene I knew I wanted it to feel like early Christmas morning, and instead of Rudolph leading the sleigh it would be me. I pulled inspiration from different Christmas artwork and decided on a small winter village, a frozen pond, and a stone bridge. Since the village would be in the background, I kept it very low poly. I used various Unreal Engine features to create a foggy, moody nighttime scene, and since I knew my final composition early on I was able to dial in the lighting and atmosphere specifically for the camera angle.
Christmas Card 2025 (Minus me)
One of the renders for the Christmas Card, For this card this was then taken into photoshop to add myself, but this is straight captured in Unreal Engine
Alternative Shot with a more standard aspect ratio
Dramatic Shot
Reindeer Breakdown. Modeling done with 3DS Max, then taken to Blender for sculpting. Using Blender to sculpt was new for me, I want to explore this more for future projects.
I created 1 base reindeer, skinned it, and was able to pose it to get each reindeer slightly different.
For the ropes I created an Unreal Blueprint that allowed me to place and deform a rope segment on a spline, which me to update the rope shape on the fly.
Artsy Santa shot
Santa's Face. I wanted this to look like Santa was hand carved and painted from wood, and have felt clothes.
POV you're Santa
Snowy Village backdrop
As background pieces these verry low poly. All windows, doors, and chimneys were handled as their own meshes, to allow the option to make variations on the same base mesh, something a realized was a little overkill for this project.
The Christmas Crew
Santa on a Reindeer. I actually made the Santa before I made the reindeer, and it was a little disappointing you didn't see much of him in the final arrangement.
Santa Closeup.
They're about to drop the hottest album of the season.