If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. At a time when AI has become more pervasive in advertising, a return to traditional techniques can feel like an act of rebellion. Those methods may come with steeper production costs but are proving worthwhile for brands like Prada, whose new hand-drawn holiday campaign has drawn widespread praise online since debut Wednesday night.
For its 2026 holiday campaign, aptly titled “Drawing Prada: Animated by Hand,” the Italian fashion house enlisted veteran Disney animator John Pomeroy to create a hand-drawn winter wonderland starring Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chen Haoyu and Luther Ford. The campaign, conceived under creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, combines live-action photography with traditional pencil-and-paper animation, placing its cast alongside illustrated woodland creatures in a series of whimsical holiday scenes. In one image, Sink encounters a group of mice attempting to carry off a polka-dot Prada loafer, while another features Hawke alongside an animated fox in a snowy forest.
Pomeroy, whose decades-long animation career includes work on Disney’s “Pocahontas,” “Fantasia 2000” and “The Land Before Time,” led a team of artists using traditional hand-drawing techniques to create the campaign’s animated characters and landscapes. Photographer Glen Luchford shot the actors with lighting and perspectives designed to match the illustrated environments. According to a 2026 report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, nearly two-thirds of digital video ad buyers now use generative AI in creative production, up from roughly half in 2025.
Coca-Cola, meanwhile, has faced backlash for its AI-generated holiday commercials, which it produced for two consecutive years in 2024 and 2025. The project also marks a continuation of Prada’s longstanding relationship with cinema. Last year’s holiday campaign, “A Winter’s Tale,” similarly featured Hawke in a cinematic winter setting photographed by Luchford, though this year’s installment trades its more conventional live-action imagery for an illustrated fantasy.
The campaign’s still images, short films and behind-the-scenes footage are available on Prada’s website.
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