CABEON: Animation IP hub
Client: CABEON / Dream Factory Studio Year: 2023 Services: Brand Identity, Web Design & Development, Multimedia Integration, Merchandise Showcase Duration: 14 weeks Tech: WordPress + Elementor + custom integrations, YouTube and Instagram feeds, AR-card product display
The problem
CABEON is a character-driven animation property produced by Dream Factory Studio. A Korean IP built around a cast of animated characters with a growing audience and an expanding merchandise line. The property's success was diffuse: a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, broadcast TV placements, a merchandise line including interactive AR cards, partnerships across multiple platforms.
The existing web presence was dated. It didn't work as the hub the IP needed, it didn't show the AR-card merchandise effectively, and it didn't give the character-fandom a place to engage with the full CABEON universe.
The request: a multimedia hub that functions as the home base for the IP. Character encyclopedia, video content aggregation, broadcast schedule, merchandise showcase, and fan engagement.
What we built
A full multimedia content hub for the CABEON animation property.
- Character encyclopedia. Detailed profiles of every character in the CABEON universe with personality descriptions, episode appearances, and fan-facing trivia
- Video galleries. Aggregated YouTube feed with curated episode playlists, integrated natively
- Broadcast-schedule aggregator. Real-time broadcast schedule pulled from multiple TV partners
- AR-card product showcase. Dedicated product pages for the AR merchandise line with photography, usage demonstrations, and order hand-off to commerce
- Instagram integration. Live Instagram feed from the CABEON account
- Emotional tone. A site that feels playful and warm, matching the IP's character-driven voice, rather than the corporate look most Korean SME sites default to
- Multilingual groundwork. Initial launch in Korean with structural preparation for international expansion
Why it matters
CABEON is the most consumer-brand project in our audited portfolio. Meaningful because it shows the studio's capability outside the industrial-B2B default. The IP's audience includes children, families, and character-merchandise collectors, all of whom have visual expectations far different from the engineering-procurement audience most of our web work serves.
Getting the tone right required leaving our default aesthetic and building something warmer, brighter, and more playful. While still meeting the information-architecture rigor the encyclopedia and broadcast-schedule needed.
Stack
- Framework: WordPress with Elementor (chosen because Dream Factory needed in-house editing capability post-launch by non-technical content managers)
- Feed integrations: YouTube Feed Pro, Instagram Feed Pro, custom broadcast-schedule aggregator
- Hosting: client-managed Korean hosting
- Performance: LCP under 2.5s on 4G; image optimization via Imagify; lazy-loading throughout
What we learned
Consumer-brand web is a different discipline than industrial-B2B web. Most of our web portfolio is Korean industrial. Heat exchangers, valves, forging. The conventions, color palettes, typography defaults, and information-architecture expectations of that category are settled. Consumer-IP web is different on every dimension. We learned to suspend our defaults and build to the IP's voice instead.
Broadcast-schedule aggregation is a bespoke solution. There's no clean API for "Korean TV broadcast schedules across three partners." We ended up writing a small scraping + caching layer that pulls from each partner's schedule surface, normalizes the data, and re-exposes it through our site. Three days of work. It was the most-visited feature at launch.
Fan engagement is character-driven, not brand-driven. Visitors to the site explored by character, not by section. Early IA had "About CABEON / Watch / Shop" as top-level nav. Final IA led with characters. Engagement doubled.
Want something similar?
If you own a consumer IP (animation, character, entertainment property) and need a hub that matches the warmth and informational depth of the IP itself, the pattern works.
Send a two-sentence email to hello@cclemang.com.
