Beyond The Gates
Question
How can we showcase the new product and build excitement for preorders?
Solution
Invisible Element brought a Jurassic Park bunker to life as a custom diorama, sparking collectors to imagine builds of their own.
Client: NBC Universal / Jurassic World
Partners: Mattel / Target
Services: Motion Design, Editing, Toy Photography
Creative Approach & Collaboration
Commissioned by NBC Universal for the Jurassic World: Beyond the Gates – Creator Edition video series on the official Jurassic World YouTube channel, this project reimagined toy photography as a narrative motion comic.
What originally started as a static photo series featuring Mattel’s Legacy Reimagined Velociraptor Trilogy Pack evolved into a dynamic animation bringing the Jurassic universe to life in a fresh way.
Concept
I pitched two directions, including a theme park photo op built around a T-Rex head. The concept that won came from digging into film reference: a Jurassic Park exterior bunker, built around the contrast between raw poured concrete and a landscape reclaiming it.
Script & Storyboards
I sketched storyboards covering the product walkthrough, the diorama build, and the final reveal. The boards were submitted to NBC Universal's Omnichannel Retail Marketing team for approval, keeping the creative vision and marketing objectives locked in before production began.
Diorama Construction
The bunker structure was built entirely out of XPS insulation foam, using both 1" and 1/24" sheet for the different structural elements. A loose mockup in cardboard and scrap foam came first to lock in scale and proportions before committing to final materials, and dimensions were adjusted slightly along the way for the sake of visual balance. Precise angular cuts came from a hot wire foam cutter, which made quick work of the bunker's geometry. The door was built separately out of styrene sheet in varying thicknesses, cut by hand with an X-acto knife, with hinges and a handle added to sell the scale and realism.
Diorama Finishing
Once assembled, every surface was covered in acrylic paint, prioritizing coverage over premium paint quality given the scale of surface area involved. The door and window openings each got a clear plastic panel backed with metal mesh, a detail meant to reward close inspection. For the ground, wood filler provided a naturally granular texture that reads as dirt, with pinches of sand worked in at the wall lines for variation. While the filler was still wet, the toy Wrangler was driven across the surface to press in real tire tread, adding texture that carries through the final paint. Fake foliage was layered in last to build out the overgrowth, left unglued so the scene can be reconfigured or refreshed with different plants down the line.
Editing and Assembly
Editing came down to managing the shift between two very different segments. The product walkthrough needed to move fast and stay informative, so motion graphics carried most of that weight, reinforcing callouts without slowing the pacing. The build section called for a different approach: voiceover timed to quick cuts let the construction read clearly without tipping into tutorial territory. The closing shot, the Wrangler sitting in the finished diorama, was always the goal, the image meant to make someone want to build one of their own.