Ho ho ho!

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

Chillaxmas.
On behalf of  Martin Breuer
With  Michel Becker
Cartoon Stylized

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