e.l.f.’s stop-motion Christmas ad is a win for human creativity
by https://www.creativebloq.com/author/natalie-fear · Creative Bloq- Copy link
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The fight for the Christmas advert crown is on, and brands have set standards high this year. From hand-drawn animation to immersive storytelling, there's been a wonderful display of hand-crafted creativity, and among the ranks, beauty brand e.l.f. did not disappoint.
As the brand's first-ever holiday campaign, the beautiful stop-motion animation is a sparkling debut that captures the joy of the festive season. A masterful display of tactile craftsmanship, the 'e.l.f. Made to Stand Out' campaign carries many of the traits of the best Christmas adverts, proving that analogue storytelling is the perfect tool for sparking festive joy.
e.l.f. Made To Stand Out - YouTube
Narrated by iconic actor Alan Cumming, the campaign follows friends Kit, Echo and Cleo as they reunite in their hometown for a holiday get-together. What could be an uncomfortable hangout turns into a celebration of the qualities that make them extraordinary, spreading festive cheer.
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“For a campaign about the power of standing out, the medium needed to stand out too, and stop motion felt like such a natural fit for this story," explains Oshiya Savur, chief marketing officer at e.l.f. Beauty. "We're seeing a real appetite for nostalgia and a return to simpler times, with 72% of Americans saying nostalgic memories inspire them when life feels complicated.
There's an incredible level of craftsmanship and character that comes from building an entire world by handOshiya Savur
There's something about stop motion that takes you right back to the holiday specials you grew up watching, but we saw an opportunity to give that familiar art form a uniquely e.l.f. twist. There's an incredible level of craftsmanship and character that comes from building an entire world by hand, and when you combine that with our signature wit and wink, you create something that feels both familiar and completely unexpected.”
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Created by Apartment D Films, each element of the ad reads as a love letter to analogue craft, from individually moulded characters to intricately constructed miniature sets. "We used a wide variety of different materials! It's truly a mixed media project," Cami Kwan, Creative Director of Apartment D, tells Creative Bloq. "The puppets have aluminium and steel wire armatures inside, which makes them posable. Their hands and heads are made of printed resin, which we then painted and finished with actual e.l.f. products! The cheeks and mouths of the puppets are colored using a combination of e.l.f. Powder Blush Palette, e.l.f Perfect 10 Eyeshadow Palette, and e.l.f. Halo Glow Silky Powder Highlighter.
All the characters' hair is made with different weights and textures of yarn, to call back to super nostalgic toys, but with a modern sensibility. The eyebrows and eyelids of the characters are made of a mix of wax and clay, so they're super mouldable to get big expressions in the performance, and also so you can literally see the animators' fingerprints on the characters as they emote.
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A lot of the world around the character is made of wood, but with hand-painted textures so the wood grain is more painterly and stylized. The mini products and bottles the characters use are all hand-sculpted out of clay, and then finished with a variety of nail art techniques, like cured acrylic, gels, and powder shimmers! The mini bottles are really so, so small; none of them is more than 1 inch tall."
It wasn't a project without some difficulties, as Cami explains. "One of our challenges was integrating real beauty products intended to live on human skin with stop-motion puppets. Unlike real humans, our puppets don't have pores and don't have a body temperature, both of which e.l.f. beauty products are chemically formulated to interact with.
On top of that, stop motion puppets are designed to be handled and touched constantly during the animation process, so the treatments and colors on them need to be incredibly resilient to constant wear and tear. We spent a good deal of time on the material testing of the e.l.f. beauty products to see which ones would integrate best with our fabrication techniques.
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We're seeing a renewed appreciation for the analog, and I think that's a natural response to an increasingly digital worldOshiya Savur
It was actually really interesting to let our puppet team dip into their extensive knowledge of material science! We've found that generally anything based in a powder pigment merged really well with our typical techniques, and those combinations were really successful in getting puppets with a lot of character and a lot of dynamic color and shimmer on screen!"
Honouring such a tactile animation style is a time intensive practice, but are audiences hungry for analogue creativity? “Absolutely," says Oshiya. "The more purely AI-generated content we see, the greater the opposite and equal reaction from people craving something real: human connection and creativity they can actually feel.
We're seeing a renewed appreciation for the analogue, and I think that's a natural response to an increasingly digital world. At e.l.f., we're human first, human last. AI can be an incredible tool, but taste, discernment and original ideas come from human ingenuity. At the end of the day, we want to make people feel something, and that human element is what makes it possible.”
"The thing I'm most proud of is how kind and collaborative our crew on this project was. It's not something you can point to on screen, but it's something you can feel in how much care was taken with every frame, and how lively the animation is. There was so much joy in the creation and filming of this project, and I do think you can feel that in how kinetic and inventive everything is. It's a little zany, a little imperfect, and really so captivating when all seen together!" says Cami.
Every quirk and detail adds personality to the story, and there's no expectation of perfection.Oshiya Savur
"For a more specific on-screen detail, though, I love the smear frames we used when Echo is zooming between the tables and getting everyone amped up! Smear frames are an animation technique that's most typical in 2D animation – they're moments when, for just a few frames, you distort the character and literally smear them to give a sense of speed, mimicking the way something moving too fast on a live-action camera will appear blurry.
You hardly ever see smear frames in stop motion, but one of the things that we really focus on at Apartment D is pushing the stylistic boundaries of stop motion and finding ways to bring 2D animation techniques into our three-dimensional medium. So, in that Echo zooming scene, we actually used pieces of cut paper to create practical, dimensional smear frames! Jen Prokopowicz, the animator of that shot, curved the paper smears to get an extra sense of dimension, and created smears of different sizes to get a sense of speeding up and slowing down. It's just so cool, and something that generally only real animation nerds will notice," Kami adds.
“At e.l.f., we've never been interested in being part of a sea of sameness. We're a brand that celebrates the unexpected, embraces individuality and believes that what makes us different is what makes us extraordinary. That's what I love about stop motion. Every quirk and detail adds personality to the story, and there's no expectation of perfection. Just as no two handcrafted creations are exactly alike, no two people are either. It's a playful way to bring our belief in celebrating every eye, lip and face to life, and a reminder that your difference is low-key your gift,” says Oshiya.
For more creative inspiration check out Prada's Disney inspired Christmas campaign or take a look at Dior's festive ad that ruffled some feathers.