Ho ho ho!

1) Take this xmas card. 2) Let it burn.

Chillaxmas.

The idea

For their xmas card, Havas approached me with the idea of a Santa chilling in front of a real fireplace:

fig. 2: The lovely briefing

The clue: One would be able to download a video of a real fire to a smartphone and slip it into the card!

Step 1

fig. 3: Sketches of Mr. S.

The goal was to get Santa right first (fig. 3) and to add a tree, a fireplace, and some other stuff in the same style afterwards.

It quickly turned out that outlines wouldn't work properly (fig. 4a), so we chose a flat look and made it slick (fig. 4b + 4c).

fig. 4a: White on red is hard to decipher …
fig. 4b: … unless it's the negative part of the drawing.
fig. 4c

Step 2

In order to get a better-looking style, this sketch was turned into vector graphics bit by bit.

fig. 5

Because of that, it was easy to adjust parts of the drawing and to add details on the way:

fig. 6

Hello Santa, goodbye 2015.

And that's the final thing. (To my own surprise, it's really magical and joyful to add a soothing fire to the otherwise static card!)

fig. 7a
fig. 7b
fig. 8