It’s that time of year, again. The KFC yule log is back. Eggnog is flowing at happy hours. And agencies everywhere are taking a break from timesheets to create The Agency Holiday Card that’ll top all agency holiday cards that have come before.
Brunner’s Holiday Card is one of our favorite traditions of the season. We create one every year, our 2020 Holiday Card being a recent favorite, but truthfully speaking it can be a bit time-consuming.
This year, instead of an open “whaddya got” review of concepts, we tapped into artificial intelligence during a creative team happy hour. And unless you’ve been living atop Mount Crumpit you probably heard a thing or two about AI art recently.
The team started talking about the essence of every holiday gathering…togetherness and traditions that fill the time at home with the ones we love.
Movies were a recurring tradition. Specifically, the holiday classics. From White Christmas to Miracle on 34th Street, Elf…holiday-themed movies that make the season more joyful but for the most part, they’re a schtick, except for Die Hard…not up for debate.
Cue this year’s holiday card concept—Brunner’s 12 Days of Christmas Movies We’d Love to Make.
As the movie ideas flowed, Midjourney and Dall-E 2 helped visualize them faster than Saint Nick in a tailwind. Midjourney to generate the images based on prompts, which are basically a string of keywords. With the right prompt whatever you see in your head (or something close to it) can be generated in minutes—it’s somewhat unnerving. Dall-E 2 filled in where Midjourney fell short, like extending backgrounds and fixing MJ’s weird interpretation of human hands. The creatives pulled those images into trusty old Photoshop for further refinement.
AI-generated art has exploded in the last year and it’s just getting started. Some see it as a threat to the creative process while we see it as a tool in our ever-growing and evolving creative landscape. And if this year’s Brunner Holiday Card is any indication, AI has a place in our creative process to push ideating, visualization and elevating mood boards. Over time, it’ll make us faster for our clients. Plus, it’s fun as hell.
I’ll stop typing now and share Brunner’s 12 Days of Christmas Movies We’d Love to Make.
Happy Holidays,
Dan
Genre: Computer-Animated Family Comedy
It’ll take some special holiday magic to turn forever foes into friends but this unlikely duo teams up to save Christmas.
Genre: Holiday Romance
A girl from the big city moves to a quiet country town and falls in love with her very own Shepherd.
Genre: Inspiring Sports Drama
Hapless, but full of heart, the cellar-dwelling elves are the perennial losers of North Pole hockey. Can they turn their focus from toys to goals and make hockey history with the first undefeated season?
Genre: Hard-hitting Documentary
After an aerial phenomenon, a documentary team sets out to uncover the connection between climate change and the first ever yellow Christmas.
Genre: Feel-good Family
The story of an Oatmeal Raisin cookie that finds itself on a tray of Chocolate Chips delivers a body-positive message baked full of love, self-acceptance and feel-good humor.
Genre: Rom-com
Following a Christmas Eve hookup, Santa scrambles to finish delivering gifts on Christmas Morning.
Genre: Indie Horror
A nor’easter traps four friends in a cabin for the holidays where they must survive the elements and a swarm of zombie elves.
Genre: A Coming of Age Christmas Adventure
On Christmas Day a neighborhood bully forces a kid to eat reindeer droppings…which unknowingly gifts the kid the power of flight.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Santa’s had enough of online personas…filters, unrealistic beauty standards, trolls, entitled influencers, “it’s just a prank bro videos”, and cringe worthy TikTok trends. Not to mention some questionable browsing history. Unless some online behavior changes, everyone is getting coal this year.
Genre: Action
Blitzen returns home for the holidays to find a group of Wolves have taken over the workshop, and everyone in it. He realizes there’s no one to save Christmas—but him.
Genre: Inclusive Sci-fi
In this sci-fi reimagining of a holiday classic, a festive cephalopod rises from the deep to fill in for an incapacitated Santa in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Genre: Dystopian Adventure
Before the Big Man retires, he brings together the Mall Santas of the world to compete in an elaborate series of reindeer games where the winner is crowned the next Santa Claus.
As the Director of Creative Services, Dan Magdich oversees creative projects, progress, and execution. Dan leads and mentors a cross-functional team of creative directors, art directors, writers, designers, producers, editors, cinematographers, animators, and production artists. Throughout his career, Dan has created work for Google, Dropbox, Field & Stream, Nationwide, The Home Depot Rental, and GNC, to name a few.