Christmas Cards are Boring
Christmas Cards are Boring
How it started…
As young newlyweds, we quickly realized we had too many friends and family to give gifts and not nearly enough budget. Cross the magic of a graphic designer marrying an excel doc loving engineer happy to do some baking and you get a spread sheet complete with shopping list, baking production timeline, and mailing addresses.
The Early Years
The first iterations of cards started very simple leaning on costuming and home decor. Our love of indie films and particularly Wes Anderson came out strong in these first few cards.
Planning a full year ahead and thrifting helped with budget constraints. Then creative liberty was taken in line with the stories. Our dog Zoey playing the part of the hawk in The Royal Tenenbaums was added and her naturally stoic expression could shine.
Stills from The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) © Touchstone Pictures/American Empirical Pictures
Still from Little Miss Sunshine (2006) © Fox Searchlight Pictures/Big Beach Film
Progression
Each year the level of work on the post production side has progressed as my skills have increased. Spending more time trying to recreate the original effects as similarly as possible.
The Notebook required shooting with each dog separately in the shower for the rain look and I couldn’t miss that exaggerated white glow outlining them on the poster. More attention was spent on recreating the credit line text and rebuilding the Motion Picture movie rating logo to grant as much ‘credibility’ to the look as possible.
Fun Fact: This was the first year an extended family member did not recognize our postcard and tossed it out! She thought it was an actual movie ad, even though the movie was about 12 years old at this point (hehe😹).
The Notebook (2004) cover image © New Line Cinema
For Jurassic Park, a lot of time was spent capturing video of our dogs moving and jumping around, trying to recreate the positions of the velociraptors so that I could piece together different stills to create the perfect placements for them.
After all of that pet training and video work, a few images of my husband and I in costume was plenty. Letting the magic of photo editing being my makeup toolkit.
Kitchen scene from Jurassic Park (1993) © Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment
Now
After 9 years of this project, my skill set has grown and the ideas have only expanded to be more ridiculous. The final products have grown into full blown recreations of movie scenes and embedding our photos into new worlds, beyond what we can recreate at home.
Emma Stone as Cruella (2021) © Walt Disney Pictures | Source: Disney News
Expanding Ideas
What started with indie films has expanded to niche book references and tv shows. Leaving our friends really out of luck on guessing what will be next.
What We Do in the Shadows TV series poster © FX Networks | Source: TMDb
Animorphs #37 'The Weakness' book cover © Scholastic Inc. | Illustration: David B. Mattingly
Image from 'Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!' © 1969-1970 Hanna-Barbera Productions. Currently owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment.
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