If the major studios don\u2019t want to give audiences lush, classic hand-drawn animation, at least some luxury fashion houses seem keen to put veteran animators to work.<\/p>\n
Prada\u2019s new holiday campaign, Drawing Prada: Animated by Hand, features animation directed by John Pomeroy, whose career spans more than five decades across Disney, Don Bluth\u2019s studios, and numerous other independent productions. The series of ads blends live action with classic 20th-century 2D animation, placing its human cast in illustrated winter landscapes populated by woodland creatures.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pomeroy began his Disney career in 1973, animating on Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too under legendary animator Frank Thomas. He later joined Don Bluth and Gary Goldman as one of the three founders of Don Bluth Productions before eventually returning to Disney, where he supervised the animation of John Smith in Pocahontas. His background also includes the live-action\/animation hybrid Pete\u2019s Dragon.<\/p>\n
For the Prada project, Pomeroy assembled a team of fellow traditional animators. In an accompanying behind-the-scenes film, lead animator Tom Bancroft describes Pomeroy as having \u201ccalled the band back together.\u201d Pomeroy, meanwhile, explains the foundation of their approach: \u201cI learned my craft with pencil and paper.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Glen Luchford handled photography and direction, with lighting and perspective designed to match the illustrated environments. Ferdinando Verderi served as the campaign\u2019s creative director. The campaign includes both short films and still images.<\/p>\n
The Prada campaign echoes what we\u2019ve seen in other high-end fashion ads, like Givenchy\u2019s 2022 101 Dalmatians spot<\/a>, overseen by another 20th-century legend, Eric Goldberg, and more modest marketing from ambitious artists inspired by classic 2D feature animation, like this 2025 Scandinavian PSA<\/a> about recycling. These commissions won\u2019t rebuild Hollywood\u2019s hand-drawn feature pipeline, but they\u2019re a reminder that the medium still has plenty to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the major studios don\u2019t want to give audiences lush, classic hand-drawn animation, at least some luxury fashion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}