2021 In review

2021 Wrapped.

2021 has been a fantastic year here at Pikcells, summarised by continued growth in both the size of the team and the extent of our portfolio.

We've continued to push into new markets with our interactive offering, producing some superb award winning tools, which we've detailed further below. We're also immensely proud of our CGI and interior design work this year, with two of our projects winning accolades – including the overall prize of “Kitchen of the Year” – in the Ideal Home Kitchen Awards.

Here's a summary of our favourite bits of 2021

Back in 2019's review we wrote “You’re only as good as your last image” and we're still firm believers in that mantra. We're extremely proud of the quality of our CGI work this year with more clients showing confidence in our designs, they've given our interiors team increased creative control which in turn has lead to some superb images. Some of the more notable (and award winning) images can be found in our Uform, Wren, NatureWall and PWS portfolio pages.

Award winning innovation.

We've crafted several interactive 360° room configurators this year for kitchens and bathroom manufacturers, upping the game once again by adding additional elements and interior design styles for some clients. The interactive team have also pushed the boundaries further creating bespoke, ground-breaking online tools for some of our clients.

Notable projects include our award winning Frovi Bamboo configurator; a new modular shelving system with our too allowing online configuration with the additional complexity of a layout design and pricing tool.

Our Integral sliding wardrobe configurator delivers a practical solution to pricing and ordering sliding wardrobe doors online with literally millions of combinations and sizes. By keeping as much of the environment and interface in 3D as possible the dev team crafted a clever technique that scales doors, the space inside the wardrobe and the room interior simultaneously.

Team trips.

Team bonding is something we place a lot of value on. We usually arrange quarterly trips, allowing everyone a chance to socialise and take part in activities out of the office environment. The pandemic and social distancing rules interrupted our plans earlier in the year, but we did manage to attend an award event and grab some quality social time outdoors with an afternoon trek at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and our Christmas excursion to Malham.

Awards.

We've had great success once again over the 2021 awards season with our 3D interactive software winning four accolades. Our customers also had great success with two of our CG images collecting awards in the 2021 Ideal Home Kitchen Awards, with one of our interior designs winning the coveted overall prize of “Kitchen of the Year”.

New faces.

The Pikcells team has increased in size considerably in 2021, we've taken on four new technical experts on the interactive team and an experienced 3D artist has joined the CGI unit. In December we advertised several positions, which we're in the process of filling so 2022 looks exciting, with even more new teammates joining us in the near future. We're always on the lookout for likeminded individuals to join our team.

Articles and features.

At the start of 2021 the Corona Renderer team contacted us to discuss including our Wren TV advert and kitchen animations in their 3-minute showreel. We were delighted to have our projects displayed alongside some of the best VFX and animation work in the business.

We also shared insights into our 3D capture workflow with Artec 3D where we explained how their Eva 3D scanner allows us to quickly capture products and furnishings for use in our interactives and CGI.

Prolific North also wrote about our continued growth into web development and 3D software in a short article with our five new team members.

Showreel.

We're currently working on a new 2022 showreel, adding fresh CG images and some of the fantastic interactive tools we've built this year. We've included our reel from earlier in the year, which features some terrific 3D configurators, AR tools, 360° tours and of course more stunning CGI projects.