A jaunty cast of diminutive, festive characters seemingly effortlessly sprung from the pen of noted illustrator Elvis Swift to provide a graphic theme unifying the pages of the 2012 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, the luxury retailer’s annual showcase of the year’s most fabulous gifts. Swift’s illustrated characters take another star turn in a short animated film by Janimation (1:10) that mixes the life-action modeling, featuring Karlie Kloss, with product photography for a most engaging effect.
Watch the animation: The Christmas Book
See: “The Book”
“About a year ago, Randy Elia, of the Bennett.Elia agency, requested some sample drawings for a potential project with Neiman Marcus,” said Swift, whose creative credits include: Kate Spade, Anthropologie, Crabtree & Evelyn, Loews Hotels, Barron’s, Johnson & Johnson, Crate & Barrel, Fisker Karma Cars, Robert Mondavi Winery, Wine Spectator Magazine and The New York Times.
Borders and Bows Becomes “The Book” Theme
“The initial request was simply for some border lines and bows,” added Swift, “but the agency parlayed the doodles into a presentation for Neiman’s annual holiday gift catalog. So from a few doodles sprung a rather ambitious project for ‘The Book‘ that required nearly two months to complete.”
The original theme was the most ambitious, an illustrated Rube Goldberg style machine that would transform throughout the pages – with products and gifts ideas running along its conveyor. However, the idea was jettisoned at the eleventh hour when the buyers asked to have more product displayed. However, one can still see glimpses of the machine in the animation.
So Swift proceeded without the machine, retaining his simple line-drawn characters, who were originally designed to keep the conveyor running, adding a scarf here, mittens there, a pointy hat with a ball atop there, etc., all strung together by a continuous stroke of the pen. “They’re happy-go-lucky sorts bumping around the stuff,” said Swift.
The animation was a collaborative effort with Janimation, Dallas, derived from the storyline in several of the multi-spread illustrations that decorate The Book.
From Illustrations to Animation
Once the animatics were completed, Swift took the original art and reworked the files in Vector to provide pieces for the final animation. “In some cases, I created sequential animations,” said Swift. “For example, the running dog is a ten drawing running pattern that repeats as the dog runs across the page.”
In all Swift completed twelve illustrated spreads for each of the two themes, comprised of a variety of linking devices including: clusters of balloons, ski lines, reins, a ribbon of highway and electric cable, from which the characters interact with product and model photographs.
“We did very loose sketches that the art director took to New York as a guide for the model photography,” added Swift. “Of course, the shoot produced a slightly different version so once we had the photos I drew the characters accordingly.”
A Cast of Hundreds
For Swift, the most fun aspect of the assignment was creating the diminutive characters and populating a world for them that essentially is a single line. The original drawings for the 22-page opener in ‘The Book‘ was sketched as one continual line on pages taped together, which ran 17 feet. Then the line was populated with Swift’s little inked friends. The 24-page ‘gift machine’ that was scrapped was even longer and more complex.
Swift created hundreds of little characters that were then scanned. “I had to pick the characters up, move them around and put them into their context quickly,” noted Swift. So I only drew bodies of a single line with floating eyes. I found that as I was selecting the characters I had forgotten to grab the eyes so, as it turns out, none of them have eyes and don’t seem the worse off for it.”
To facilitate the production process, Swift created high resolution spreads, dropped in the models and products, incorporated his illustrations and handed vector layered illustrator files over to Neiman Marcus’ production department that provided them the freedom to move, rotate, and adjust the drawings and products.
One of Swift’s favorite animated scenes opens as an electrical cable being plugged, then transforms into a Christmas tree that a character skis down. “I made it as playful as could be. I just had fun with it all and the wonderful people at Neiman Marcus made the process most enjoyable.”
Credits
Tim Flannery-Creative Director Neiman Marcus Direct
Janet Longstreth -Art Director, Neiman Marcus Direct
Georgia Christensen – Exec Creative Director NM Stores
Dara Mongelli – Design Director for Neiman Marcus Brand
Joyce Cheng- Art Director
Beverly Ann Moore – Art Producer
Randy Elia, Peggy Bennett – Bennett.Elia Advertising
Elvis Swift is represented by Joanie Bernstein
