For luxury brands and their audiences, Prada’s holiday campaign makes handmade craftsmanship a point of distinction against algorithmic content.
Prada commissioned John Pomeroy, a veteran of Disney and Don Bluth animation, to direct the campaign. The finished advertisement presents hand-drawn work as a contrast to algorithmic imagery.
The short films place five actors in winter settings with Prada pieces. Sadie Sink appears as cartoon mice make a grab for her shoes; a snow lynx chases after Chen Haoyu’s bag; and Maya Hawke meets a fox in the snow.
Glen Luchford filmed Sink, Hawke, Haoyu, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Luther Ford against winter backdrops. Pomeroy’s animated creatures, including mice, a lynx, a fox, rabbits and bats, were then brought into the live-action footage.
Every frame was made by hand. Artists drew dozens of separate sketches to create even the smallest movement in a character, and Prada released behind-the-scenes footage of that process.
Pomeroy began by finding each character’s personality. Their appearance and the world around them followed.
“I learnt my craft with pencil and paper, through traditional, analogue drawing. We’ve remained faithful to that approach and want to pass it on to future generations,” Pomeroy said.
He has made a career in a medium that depends on accumulated manual skill. Born in Los Angeles on 26 March 1951, Pomeroy joined Disney’s training programme in January 1973, where he worked under Eric Larson.
His Disney credits included the Oscar-nominated ‘Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too’ (1974), ‘The Rescuers’ (1977), ‘Pete’s Dragon’ (1977) and ‘The Fox and the Hound’ (1981).
On 13 September 1979, he left Disney to establish Don Bluth Productions with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. He was producer, co-writer and animation director on ‘The Secret of NIMH’ (1982), then worked on ‘An American Tail’ (1986), which outgrossed Disney’s ‘The Great Mouse Detective’ to become the highest-grossing animated feature on first release up to that point.
Pomeroy later served as supervising animator on ‘Pocahontas’, designing John Smith and leading a team of fourteen animators. For ‘Atlantis: The Lost Empire’, he was lead character designer for Milo Thatch.
In 1992, he sold his share of Don Bluth Productions and returned to painting. He left Disney for a second time in 2003, when the company wound down its hand-drawn feature department, and now teaches animation at Lipscomb University in Nashville.
“There is a clear and deliberate reason for creating hand-drawn animation, and that is to show just how valuable the human touch is. Hand-drawn and handcrafted work is still very much alive today,” Pomeroy said.
Prada released ‘Drawing Prada’ on 27 October 2026. Women’s Wear Daily called it “Prada’s antidote to AI slop.”
Online users praised the choice of handmade animation. “Finally something without AI!” one wrote, while another said: “Human hand drawn animation!! Yes please!” Others said the videos took them back to childhood.
Comments (0)