City & Tourism
Longgang’s landmarks keep their original shape but get new skins of ice cream, watermelon and lychee, creating fresh seasonal content for everyday channels.
01 / Background
Longgang’s everyday city account needs new content every so often: instantly recognizable as Longgang, yet fresh. We made three shorts, lychee, watermelon and ice cream, giving familiar landmarks the textures of fruit and desserts to catch the seasonal buzz of summer.
The idea only works if the city is still recognizable. The lychee film covers building surfaces in the texture of lychee skin; the ice cream film adds cream, cones and pastel blocks over the existing outlines of roofs, rivers and plazas. The landmarks tell people where they are; the shapes and textures of the food bring the novelty.
02 / Creative Highlights
Corporate headquarters, cultural venues, an energy eco-park and plazas all have different structures. The twin towers are still two towers side by side, and the Universiade Center keeps its faceted roof; only the surfaces change to lychee skin, watermelon flesh, or cones and cream. Familiar places and surreal textures share one frame, and both read clearly.
In each film, buildings, trees and sculptures share one texture and similar colors: red lychee skin in the lychee film, green rind and red flesh in the watermelon film, pastel cream in the ice cream film. Different landmarks look like parts of one “fruit city” or “dessert city,” rather than unrelated effects added one by one.
All three fruit and dessert themes revolve around the same city: the landmarks are what everyone knows, and the texture is what changes each time. Each short has its own theme on its own, and together they echo one another.
The lychee film focuses on a complete lychee-skin exterior rather than scattered piles of fruit flesh. The main surfaces of each building are covered in red, bumpy texture, so viewers recognize lychee at a glance while the building keeps its overall shape.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The ice cream film opens with four sights: Hehu New Residence, the Red Cube, the Longgang River and Shenxian Lake. The outlines of the walled house, slanted roof, river and lake all stay; the surfaces turn into powder-blue, pale-yellow and pink cream.
The outer walls and eaves of the Hakka walled house are smeared with pink and blue cream, a cone stands by the door, and the plaque over the gate is still legible.
The Red Cube’s slanted roof is painted in blue, yellow and pink stripes, with several giant cones in the foreground; the building’s slanted face is instantly recognizable.
Scoops of ice cream line both banks as the camera skims forward over the water, finally opening onto Shenxian Lake: the boardwalk, distant hills and reflections are all in their real positions.
After the Children’s Park comes the most familiar cluster of buildings: Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters, the Galaxy Twin Towers, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University and the Longgang Energy Eco-Park. Each building gets a dessert look that follows its own shape.
The camera turns from the lakeside to the Children’s Park; the Ferris wheel keeps its round frame and spokes, just painted in cream colors.
Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters stacks up in layers of colorful cream; the Galaxy Twin Towers become two cones side by side, with waffle cones below and two flavors of ice cream on top.
The spire of MSU-BIT University looks like a cake topped with a cone; the energy eco-park’s round main building looks like a melting ice cream cake, its two chimneys swapped for wafer rolls topped with scoops of ice cream.
The velodrome and the Universiade Center keep their roof shapes, the dragon sculpture at Longcheng Square becomes a giant cone, and the film ends by passing through a hall in Longtan Park to The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
After the velodrome’s ring of stands, the Universiade Center’s faceted roof turns into waffle cone and blocks of ice cream, and the reflection in the water makes the location clear.
The dragon sculpture’s column becomes a cone piled high with chocolate and cream; shot from below, the sculpture still feels tall.
The camera approaches a dessert building in Longtan Park, passes through its hall, and comes out at the gate of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; a single pass through a doorway leads to the final stop.
The watermelon film opens by cutting a whole melon; where it splits, Longtan Park appears, followed by the velodrome, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University and the energy eco-park.
A whole watermelon splits down the middle, the two halves slide out of frame, and behind them is Longtan Park, with green-rind roofs and red-flesh terraces.
A ring of triangular watermelon wedges lines the velodrome’s circular roof, like sliced melon laid out on a plate.
MSU-BIT University’s buildings turn into red flesh and green rind; the energy eco-park’s round main building becomes one big cut slice of watermelon, seeds clearly visible.
The second half uses a different cut for each building shape: triangular slices for the Universiade Center, green rind and red flesh for the dragon sculpture, two upright strips of flesh for the twin towers, ending at Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters.
The Universiade Center’s faceted roof lines up perfectly with triangular slices of watermelon, green rind below and red flesh above, and the building’s geometry stays fully intact.
The dragon sculpture at Longcheng Square grows green rind and red flesh; a big watermelon sweeps past the lens and blocks the view, and when it clears, we’ve arrived at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
The Galaxy Twin Towers become two upright strips of watermelon, red flesh and black seeds on top and green rind below, as the camera flies forward along the cut faces.
Past the twin towers, the view opens onto a cluster of buildings and settles on Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters, its facade now watermelon rind.
The lychee film is the earliest and shortest of the set: all nine landmarks wear the same bumpy red lychee skin, while lychees and leafy branches in the foreground handle the transitions.
The dragon sculpture at Longcheng Square is covered in lychee skin, then the whole Huawei Shenzhen headquarters building becomes one square block of lychee.
The Galaxy Twin Towers are two lychee columns; the camera then reaches the Universiade Center, where the white geometric frame stays and the faceted panels become red lychee skin.
A giant lychee moves up to the lens and pulls away to reveal the international velodrome; a fruit-laden branch sweeps past, leading into Longtan Park.
Shenzhen MSU-BIT University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen appear one after the other, and the film comes to rest on the round lychee shell of the energy eco-park.
04 / Gallery
05 / Results
Lychee Longgang (about 22 seconds, June 2025), Watermelon Longgang (about 34 seconds, July 2025) and Ice Cream Longgang (about 41 seconds, July 2025) are all 1912×1080 landscape and all published on WeChat Channels. The player at the top of this page shows the ice cream film; the watermelon and lychee films can be played section by section in the breakdown above.
Case Study
A city’s everyday account has to keep updating, but there are only so many landmarks.
Huawei headquarters, the Galaxy Twin Towers, the Universiade Center: locals have long seen them all.
We didn’t change the places, only the “flavor”: first lychee, then watermelon, and finally ice cream.
From June to July 2025, we made these three AI city shorts for Longgang’s everyday channels, 22 to 41 seconds each, all published on WeChat Channels.
01
Everyday channel videos are different from a big once-a-year promo. A new one has to go out every so often, each needs a bit of novelty, and none can look like some other city.
Our approach: keep the landmarks, change the material. Using the same set of landmark photos, each film swaps in a different summer fruit or dessert: lychee skin, watermelon flesh, cream and cones. The buildings’ shapes tell people where they are; the fruit textures make them want to tap and watch.
In all three films, the twin towers are still two towers side by side, and the Universiade Center keeps its faceted roof. By the second and third films, viewers instinctively look for “what the twin towers turned into this time.” That’s where the sense of a series comes from.
02
The lychee film came first, and it’s where the method for the whole set was settled. A dozen or so landmark photos had to be converted into one style; if each image got its own separate description, the results could easily look like ten different worlds, and the seams would show once they were cut into video.
So we first wrote an opening shared by every image, describing “a city sculpture made of lychees”: red lychee skin, clear shell texture, and green hills dotted with lychees in the background. Then we added each building’s own features, such as a stadium, a school gate or a dragon sculpture.
The word “sculpture” in that opening was key. With it, the image treats the building as “carved from lychee,” and the fruit takes up much more of the frame, instead of a few lychees placed beside a building.
This lesson also went into the production notes: unify the style of the whole set first, then refine individual images. It’s faster than polishing each image from the start, and the set looks more like one family. The watermelon and ice cream films followed the same order.
03
The most common problem in restyling: the building keeps its original glass curtain wall while lychees just pile up around it. Fruit and building then tell separate stories, and it doesn’t read as a “lychee city.”
We switched to a generation mode that follows the building’s edges, keeping its outline, window grid and entrances in place, then let the lychee skin grow directly on the facade. Spots where the texture didn’t take, or the perspective didn’t line up, were repainted locally.
In the film, Huawei headquarters is one square block of lychee, and the Universiade Center keeps its white geometric frame, with only the faceted panels turned into lychee skin. The theme is bold, and the buildings’ structure isn’t buried.
The twin towers are two lychee columns; the Universiade Center’s white frame stays, and its faceted panels turn into red lychee skin.
04
Watermelon isn’t like lychee: it has green rind, red flesh and black seeds, and it can be cut into chunks or slices. We chose the cut to fit each building’s shape: triangular slices for the Universiade Center’s faceted roof, two upright strips of flesh for the twin towers, and a whole cut slice for the energy eco-park’s round main building.
A whole watermelon splits down the middle, and the first stop is right where it opens.
The film opens with a whole melon cut in half to reveal Longtan Park. That cut is the “switch” for the whole film, so the sound got special attention: the slicing sound had to be loud and crisp, modeled on the satisfying sound of fruit-slicing games, and the music comes in from the very first second so the opening isn’t just a lone knife sound.
The watermelon film also visits the landmarks in a different order from the lychee film; the same places in a different order make a new tour route.
05
By the third film, the familiar landmarks had already appeared twice. So for the ice cream film, we took the new sights suggested by the Longgang side, gathered photos from several image sources, picked ones with clear composition and distinctive architecture, and put the new sights at the front of the film.
So the ice cream film sets off from Hehu New Residence and the Red Cube, follows the Longgang River to Shenxian Lake, passes the Ferris wheel in the Children’s Park, and only then reaches familiar faces like Huawei headquarters and the twin towers. The film covers 14 places in all, the most of the three.
Scoops of ice cream on both banks sweep past the lens as the river opens onto Shenxian Lake, with the boardwalk and reflections in their real positions.
The camera also travels further than in the first two films: pushing along the river, circling around building clusters, and finally passing through a hall in Longtan Park to come out at the gate of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Viewers feel like they’re touring the city, not just flipping through fantasy images.
06
Once the buildings turn into fruit, they look different from usual, so the place-name captions matter a lot. All three films use the same naming, such as the full name “Guangdong Longgang International Velodrome” for the cycling venue; captions sit fixed in the top-left corner, left-aligned, so however fast viewers scroll, they know where they are.
The lychee film was finally cut to about 22 seconds for a quicker pace; before delivery, every caption and frame was checked for stray watermarks.
07
For a city’s everyday channels, the hardest part isn’t making one good film; it’s coming up with another one every so often.
This set offers a method that can keep going:the same set of landmark photos, the same style opening, and only one new material each time.After lychee, watermelon and ice cream, it could be another season or another holiday.
Every time, viewers see the Longgang they know; only this time, it’s sweet.
FAQ
We restyle from real landmark photos and use an edge-referenced mode to keep each building’s outline, window grid and entrances, changing only the surface material; spots that don’t come out right are repainted locally. In the finished films, every landmark gets a place-name caption in the same position, such as Galaxy Twin Towers or Shenzhen Universiade Center.
Write one style description shared by every image first, then add each building’s own features. Once the lychee film set this method, the watermelon and ice cream films reused the same landmark photos, the same caption style and the same production order, so the three look like one series side by side.
From sorting landmark photos in late June 2025 to finalizing the ice cream film in early July, the three took about three weeks in total: the lychee film was finalized in June, the watermelon and ice cream films in July.
All three are 1912×1080 landscape films, 22 to 41 seconds long, with place-name captions and music, and have been published on WeChat Channels. Shorts of a few dozen seconds like these suit regular updates on a city account.
Approach
For the lychee film, we first set a unified prompt opening, then added a description for each building, using the word “sculpture” to pin down the lychee form. The shared opening handles the overall style; each building’s description makes the place recognizable.
The lychee film also used an edge-referenced mode to keep building outlines and locally repaired the textures. The watermelon and ice cream films reused the same landmark photos and the same method: watermelon cuts chosen by building shape, and ice cream in cream, cones and bright pastels. All three show the landmark’s shape and the new texture in the same frame.
The ice cream film uses push-ins and lateral orbits on many landmarks: as the camera moves closer, the cone texture of the twin towers and the cream surface of the plaza sculpture become more and more detailed, while reflections along the riverbank and at the Universiade Center keep showing where each building stands. So the transformed buildings are recognizable by their outlines from afar, and their new textures read clearly up close.
More Work
Ideal for brand launches · public-sector communications · cultural-tourism campaigns · IP transformation · event openers · earnings visualization · social campaigns · AI workflow development
