SKYPOTION / SELECTED WORK
Brand identity / Illustration / Packaging / Vehicle graphics
Kats9Pies is a New Zealand pie business offering vegan and vegetarian pies with flavours inspired by different parts of the world. Its range includes plant-based takes on familiar favourites alongside more adventurous fillings.
A character-led identity for Kats9Pies. A playful mascot, vivid colour and expressive lettering connect packaging, promotional design and vehicle graphics.
01 / DISCOVER
Kats9Pies is a plant-based pie brand aimed at a teenage audience. Bright pink, anime styling and a fun, creative personality were part of the direction from the outset.
02 / DEFINE
The visual approach brings together expressive lettering, vivid colour and a recognisable mascot. These elements give Kats9Pies a consistent personality across food packaging and promotional material.
03 / DESIGN
An original hand-drawn logo sketch shows the lettering before its finished colour treatment. The final signature and mascot build on the same playful character.
TYPE & CHARACTER
Suggested type pairings based on the identity’s letterforms. Visual matches and complementary choices, rather than confirmed original fonts.
DISPLAY / VISUAL MATCH
Patua One echoes the identity’s substantial, rounded slab-serif character. It gives short headlines a friendly food-brand presence, while the original illustrated lettering and mascot keep their own personality.
SUPPORTING / SUGGESTED PAIRING
DM Sans balances the expressive headlines with clear ingredient information, flavour names and everyday brand messages.
04 / DEVELOP
Packaging, vehicle graphics and flyer artwork show how the identity adapts to different customer touchpoints. Colour, lettering and character keep those applications connected.
05 / DELIVER
The brand board brings together the identity, colour, character and applications. It provides a single view of the finished visual system.
CAMPAIGN / MOTION DESIGN
A 25-second landscape advert that turns Kats9Pies’ plant-based offer into an energetic, character-led story.
“No Death Pies” gives the plant-based proposition a deliberately unexpected expression. Rather than leading with a conventional ingredient message, the advert builds a playful story around the phrase itself. The mascot’s cartoon brush with death turns the headline into a visual joke, before the final “Plant Based Pies” message makes the product connection explicit.
The contrast is the point: exaggerated danger and a pie-filled paradise make room for humour, while the food and brand remain central to the payoff. It gives Kats9Pies a confident, irreverent voice and a story that belongs to its character.
The film follows the chef-cat mascot through a fast-moving delivery sequence. Determined expressions, close-ups and city-driving shots build the pace before an exaggerated impact shifts the action into arcade-style comedy. A brief skeletal transformation pushes the gag further, then the scene opens into clouds, golden gates and an endless landscape of pies.
That change of setting creates a clear release after the action. The closing brand message brings the spectacle back to the offer, so the narrative resolves around the product rather than ending with an unrelated visual punchline.
The saturated yellow and purple palette, expressive mascot and bold Kats9Pies wordmark connect the film to the wider identity. Anime-inspired expressions, speed lines and dynamic framing give those existing assets movement and personality. The landscape composition moves between wide environments and tight character shots, balancing scale with an immediately readable focal point.
Repeated branding holds the sequence together as the setting changes. The result shows how the same character and visual language used on packaging and vehicle graphics can extend into a distinctive moving-image campaign.
The production approach begins with the story and the purpose of each shot: setup, escalation, impact and release. Character, composition, lighting and colour are established in still frames, with image refinement used to keep the visual world coherent before motion is introduced.
AI-assisted motion forms part of that workflow, with the final assembly and pacing shaped in After Effects. The creative control sits in the sequence: choosing what viewers see, how long they see it and how each transition carries them towards the campaign message. This keeps the animation connected to the brand idea throughout.
BRAND IN CONTEXT
Concept mockups exploring how the identity can appear across additional touchpoints.
