Recess AI
This was not an experiment in AI art. It was a paid client engagement with brand guidelines, revision cycles, platform specs, and a hard launch date: production-ready launch assets for Recess's limited-edition Peppermint Bark 'Tini.
Generative AI built the environments; After Effects made them brand-safe. Brief through multiple rounds of feedback to final delivery. The AI served the creative process; the creative process served the client.
Client Context
Recess makes functional beverages - calming drinks designed to take the edge off. Their brand identity is playful, premium, and visually distinctive. The Peppermint Bark 'Tini was a limited-edition holiday flavor that needed launch assets matching the brand's elevated aesthetic while communicating seasonal indulgence. The visual language had to feel warm, rich, and celebratory without veering into generic holiday clichés.
The engagement followed a standard professional workflow: creative brief, concept development, iterative feedback rounds, and final delivery across multiple platform formats. What made it distinctive was the production pipeline - using generative AI for environment creation and scene composition, then bringing those outputs into After Effects for the compositing, motion design, and refinement that transforms raw AI output into brand-safe, production-ready assets.
Process
01 - Brief & Concept Development
Received the creative brief from the Recess team and developed initial concept directions - mood boards and visual frameworks blending holiday-themed chocolate and peppermint textures with the brand's signature aesthetic. The concept phase established the visual rules: surreal product environments that feel indulgent and premium, with the can always positioned as the hero element.
02 - Generative AI Production
Used Runway, Flux, Kling, and Stable Diffusion to generate surreal chocolate environments, melting textures, confetti scenes, and cinematic reveal compositions. Iterated through dozens of outputs per concept, refining prompts and parameters to match the playful-yet-premium aesthetic that defines Recess. The AI handles what it does best - rapid visual exploration and environment generation at a scale that would take weeks through traditional 3D rendering or stock photography.
03 - After Effects Compositing
This is where the AI output becomes a finished product. Best-in-class AI generations were brought into After Effects for professional compositing - layering product photography, adding motion design, color grading, timing refinement, and ensuring brand consistency across every frame. Multiple rounds of client feedback shaped the final direction. AI generates the raw material; traditional post-production delivers the polish.
04 - Multi-Platform Delivery
Delivered a complete suite of animated social assets - looping GIFs and video clips optimized for Instagram Stories, feed posts, Reels, and paid social placements. Every asset was exported in multiple aspect ratios and compression profiles to meet platform specifications. The final package gave the Recess team everything they needed for a coordinated multi-channel launch.
Final Deliverables
Behind the Build
A look under the hood at two of the deliverables - how a raw generation becomes a brand-accurate, production-ready composite. The AI sets the stage; the compositing is where it becomes a finished asset.
Sweet Treat - The Indulgence Composite
The “Choco” deliverable is the most heavily composited piece in the set. What reads as a single continuous shot is actually a layered build - a generative base plate, a corrected hero can, and several isolated animation passes brought together and timed in After Effects.
The base generation nails the mood - candy cane, dark and white chocolate, the seasonal palette - but the label is pure AI hallucination: warped lettering and broken lockups that would never pass brand review. The fix is a clean label comp: the production artwork is mapped onto the can, conformed to its curvature and lighting, and the surrounding plate is cleaned up so the can reads as the unmistakable hero.
Gen - Base Plate
Edit - Label CompedTwo additional concept stills presented alongside the lead - a bed-of-bark hero on a saturated red field, and a gravity-defying balance shot - giving the client distinct staging options before committing to the final motion direction.
Concept B
Concept CThe composite assembled in After Effects - base plate, hero can, and motion elements layered with matched grade, masking, and timing. This is the step that turns a stack of generations into a single believable shot.
The detail work behind the larger comp - individual elements animated in isolation so each can be art-directed, retimed, and masked on its own before being layered back into the master composite - the close-up craft that the wide shot is built from.
The Reveal - Blending-Mode Can Swap
The “Reveal” deliverable solved a common generative limitation: AI renders convincing lighting and form, but not legible packaging artwork. The base generation produced a blank white can with beautiful, physically accurate highlights and shadows - so rather than fight the model for correct typography, the lighting was kept and the artwork was comped on top.
FinalThe Technique
A full-resolution can render was placed over the blank AI generation and set to a blending mode - Multiply / Overlay rather than Normal - so the can's artwork takes on the luminance of the layer beneath it. The generation's highlights, falloff, and contact shadows read straight through the design, which is what sells the swap. A roto mask tracked to the can's geometry constrains the overlay to the surface so the label wraps with the form and the blended lighting stays locked to the can across the entire move - no flat decal look, no relit-by-hand guesswork. The result keeps the photoreal lighting the model is good at while delivering the brand-perfect packaging the model can't produce.
Production Pipeline
AI Generation Layer
Generative models handled environment creation, texture synthesis, and initial scene composition - replacing what would traditionally be weeks of 3D rendering or stock photo sourcing with rapid, on-brand visual exploration. The key is treating AI as a production tool, not a final output. Every generation is raw material that enters a professional post-production pipeline.
Traditional Post-Production
After Effects handled the compositing, motion design, color correction, and final output encoding. Photoshop for asset preparation and retouching. Media Encoder for platform-specific export profiles. The hybrid workflow delivers higher quality and faster turnaround than either AI-only or traditional-only approaches - the AI generates breadth, the compositor delivers precision.
In the Wild
The final assets live on Recess's official Instagram - feed posts and Reels for the Peppermint Bark 'Tini launch campaign.
