New Prada Holiday Campaign Features Real Hand-Drawn Animation Crafted by Disney Veterans

A new holiday campaign has arrived from Prada that is filled with so much magic and whimsy that some veteran Disney animators had to be tapped for the job.

What's Happening:

• This year's holiday advertising campaign for Prada, dubbed "Drawing Prada: Animated by Hand", features - as one would expect by the title - hand drawn animation, along with the live-action Prada Ambassadors, Chen Haoyu, Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Luther Ford.
• The campaign combines real-life action (and Prada products!) with hand-illustrated and animated scenes of whimsical wintertime moments, placing its cast within environments of pure imagination.

• Unlike other advertisements of late, this one is traditionally hand-drawn animation (read: no AI), and even tapped some of Disney's veteran animators to do the job. There was a team of artists involved, with three names familiar to animation fans at the helm.
• Animation Director John Pomeroy
  • Pomeroy joined Walt Disney Animation Studios back in 1973, working under a few of the Nine Old Men during his time at the studio while contributing to projects like Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too and The Rescuers.
  • After further contributions to movies like Pete's Dragon, The Small One, and The Fox and the Hound, Pomeroy was also part of an uprising at the Disney studio that saw the departure of himself and a number of other animators to establish an independent studio with Don Bluth.
  • There, Pomeroy was a key figure behind The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time. He also helped produce and create animation for the groundbreaking arcade game, Dragon's Lair.
  • He eventually returned to Disney, where he served as a supervising animator for Captain John Smith in Pocahontas, and was the lead character designer for Milo Thatch in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
• Lead Animator Tom Bancroft
  • Best known for designing and supervising the animation of Mushu in Disney's Mulan, Tom Bancroft serves as a lead animator on the Prada project.
  • The author and educator spent about 11 years at Walt Disney Animation Studios (then called Walt Disney Feature Animation), with his work being seen in The Lion King, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and Brother Bear.
  • Since leaving the company, Tom has become an influential teacher of character design and an advocate for traditional hand-drawn 2D animation. He is even responsible for the documentary, Pencils Vs. Pixels.
• Lead Animator Tony Bancroft
  • Tony Bancroft, twin brother to Tom, is also a prominent figure in Disney animation, having supervised the animation of Pumbaa in The Lion King and Kronk in The Emperor's New Groove.
  • Tony jumped more into supervisory territory than Tom, as well as directing and story work. Tony co-directed Mulan alongside Barry Cook, and left Disney for a bit to serve as animation director on Stuart Little 2, and co-directed the independent feature, Animal Crackers.
  • He later returned to Disney to work on animated sequences for Mary Poppins Returns.
• The new ad taps these three talents and a number of others to bring the magic of hand-drawn animation to the new campaign.
• The holiday campaign features the Prada ambassadors in a number of winter settings, where the animals are brought to life through the art of animation. More importantly, each of the characters is given their own distinct personalities.
• You can find out more about the creation of the campaign and what Pomeroy and The Bancroft Brothers brought to their work at Prada in a special behind-the-scenes video below.