Anna Ginsburg and Sara Andreasson team up for Selfridges sustainability film

Selfridges has commissioned London-based animator Anna Ginsburg to direct a short film using Swedish illustrator Sara Andreasson’s designs, for its new campaign about sustainability of materials.

Produced by Strange Beast, Material World sees sound bites of interviews with the fashion community, exploring eight brands and “the ways they are working to make stylish materials more sustainable”. Using 2D animation and Sara’s sassy style of illustration, their words are brought to life in a mix of deep red, purple and blue.

“We’ve used the illustrations to emphasise what’s being said and guide the viewer through what is quite a lot of information," explains Anna. "The drawings rest on moments that are significant through the interviews and we’re using them drawings as a fun way of informing people about a serious issue.”

Anna conducted the interviews herself and one of the main challenges was to cut down more than eight hours of audio footage to two and a half minutes. The pair created a storyboard for the film, which was then tackled by a team of eight animators, frame by frame. “I enjoyed how incredibly efficient Sara was in producing an enormous amount of designs, like 320 designs all drawn up in an incredibly short space of time," says Anna. "Also I enjoyed the way she visualised my ideas, in a way that was so different to how I would have, her composition. I am always blown away by her use of colour, watching her developing the colour palettes, I would never have put those colours together.”

Selfridges commissioned Anna after seeing her short film, Private Parts created last year for It’s Nice That as part of its partnership with Channel 4 Random Acts, where she interviewed people about sexuality. Most recently her personal project, Spin the Aub, saw her work with Freddy Taylor to create a showcase for her hybrid animation style.

Sara has created work for Ace & Tate, Shots magazine, Nylon and Adidas Stellasport among many other clients and in September she had her first solo show at Nina Sagt Galerie in Düsseldorf in autumn 2016.