Eva Cremers is back, and this time she comes armed with an animated film for her wonderfully fun website

Eva Cremers is no stranger to It’s Nice That. The Dutch 3D illustrator has graced our screens on multiple occasions, notably for her outstanding work for Double Take collaboration with Coal Drops Yard . This led to a commission for our partnership with DEMO (Design In Motion) Festival, where she’d occupied one of the screens of our Hour of Nice feature in Amsterdam Central Station, as well as an illustrative contribution for the Strange Beast and Wieden+Kennedy Portland campaign for Travel Portland. What’s more is that her Inflatables project became one of our most-read illustration and animation articles of 2019, a piece she’d worked on with illustrator Dan Whitehouse that saw the duo create an animation based on children’s inflatable toys.

The illustrator has returned once again, but this time around it’s a little bit different – Eva has released her very own animation for a shiny new website. A film in its own right, we’ve not seen anything quite like it before – especially now as we continue to navigate through the oversaturated land of Instagram pages and templated design. “Even though it sometimes looks like websites are overrated in the era of Instagram,” Eva tells It’s Nice That, “I think websites might be more important than ever!” She continues to point out how easy it became for anyone to quite literally make their own website from scratch, yet this resulted in a repetitive style and, with similar templates being used across the board, many portfolios have ended up looking the same.

Eva’s new website is a welcomed upgrade after trudging along with the same “classic one-pager”, with some of her larger projects featured on it. “But to be honest,” she adds, “it could have been any portfolio website. It didn’t ooze this happy fun 3D world or tell anything about my personality. I really think your website can add this extra dimension to your work rather than just being images.”

This fun 3D world is what makes Eva’s website really stand out. Upon first arrival to the site, you’re taken to a game-like page that presents a big yellow “start” button – not forgetting a spacey background and a pair of googly eyes attentively following the curser with every move. Here, you have the option to head to over to her list of projects, her Instagram page or to The Lab or The Factory. If you choose start, you immediately journey through a portal door and suddenly you’re thrown into a happy world of colourful characters, balloons, smiley shapes and fruit flying in the air. “I really wanted the visitor to be able to step inside my happy world and hopefully get a big smile on their face before even seeing my work,” she adds of the concept behind the film. “And hopefully it gives a bit of a wow effect to future clients too; the animation consists of bits and pieces of old projects, so it’s almost like a summary of what I do or have done.”

As for The Lab, this is where Eva can show her “experiments, failures, fun doodles and small projects”. It’s a less-polished section that enables her to put out a few random and imperfect pieces or images into use, much like what you see on her Instagram page. “Often clients refer to these ‘3D doodles made for fun’ on Instagram, so I thought it would be a great idea to have it as a massive moodboard for them on my page.” Updated regularly, Eva hopes that this section will become an “endless stream” of her happy 3D doodles.

Then there’s The Factory, an interactive and brilliant place where you – the user – can create your own happy character in Eva’s iconic aesthetic. With body parts taken from previous characters, Eva admits that this section was pretty tricky to create technically – but luckily she had Studio Strindemarks on board who did “an amazing job”. Toying with a drag and drop navigation, the user can simply choose a body, drag and drop, then save and share. “The outcome is always close to what my characters look like,” she adds. “However, I’ve been so surprised by what people create with it and I really love seeing the outcomes.” As well as adventuring into her happy world, we highly advise you to have a go at this marvellous creation and we can’t wait to see what you make too.