Former student Annie delivers new book, 'Letters from the North Pole'

Former Coleg Menai student Annie Atkins has published a children’s Christmas book, Letters from the North Pole.

Since studying the Art Foundation course at Parc Menai in Bangor, Annie has forged a successful career as a graphic prop designer for film.

She was lead graphic designer on the highly acclaimed Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, which won the Oscar for Best Production Design in 2015.

Annie, from Dolwyddelan, also worked with Anderson on Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch, and on the Steven Spielberg thriller Bridge of Spies, having started her career on BBC costume drama The Tudors.

Now she has made her first foray into children’s books with Letters from the North Pole. Children from around the world write to Santa Claus and are amazed to receive replies, with the book containing five letters from Father Christmas that youngsters can pull out and read.

Annie, who is mum to two young boys, wanted to create an interactive experience that captured the magic and mystery of Christmas, combining her expertise in typographical design with her love of the festive period.

She said: “The children write letters to Santa Claus with ideas for inventions for toys, hoping he’ll put them into production in his workshop. Santa writes back to the kids with replies to their questions and also technical drawings of the children’s inventions drawn by his elves, and the idea is you can pull out the letters and read them.”

Through Santa’s letters, the hidden world of the North Pole is revealed, from how reindeer can sleep standing up to what snacks Santa would like left out on Christmas Eve, and how he gets round the world so quickly.

Annie added: “Each of the children adds a PS to the end of their letters to Santa, questioning his frankly ambitious Christmas Eve logistics. In his replies, Santa deftly bats away all their enquiries, just as your mother or father did for you when you were six years old.

“I have two little boys aged three and eight, so we’re in the thick of it with Santa Claus. I love Christmas, and I wanted to create a book about Santa Claus that keeps some of the magic and the mystery alive.

“When I was little my Mum used to say to me that nobody actually knows what Santa looks like, because nobody’s ever seen him. You don’t really see Santa Claus in the book, except on the stamps on the letters, so he is still a bit of a mystery.”

Asked how her boys reacted to the book, Annie said: “They think it’s quite good. I understand they may have a bias, but my eight-year-old said, ‘This is amazing, it’s like a real book!’. We’ll probably have to go and see it in a real bookshop before they believe that it actually is a real book!”

Letters from the North Pole is Annie’s second book, following Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps, in which she gives an insight into the creative process behind designing graphic props for film.

She says the highlights of her film career so far have been The Grand Budapest Hotel, and working for one of her childhood heroes in legendary director Spielberg.

“I was very lucky to work on a film like The Grand Budapest Hotel,” said Annie. “It’s such a cherished film, and it also puts the spotlight on graphic design. I don’t know if I’ll ever work on a film like that again.”

She added: “Working on Steven Spielberg movies has been an absolute dream. The films he made in the 1980s and 90s shaped me as a kid. Family adventures like Jaws, E.T. and Indiana Jones that the whole family could watch together and understand together.

“Those films are really special. Steven Spielberg made those worlds so real, and when I started working with him later on in my career, I had an opportunity to make his worlds more real for him through the props I was designing. It’s a huge privilege.”

Annie’s work has taken her across the world, from Iceland to Ireland where she currently lives, from the fictional country of Zubrowka in Grand Budapest Hotel, to real-life New York where she worked on 2019 film Joker.

But it all started for her at Coleg Menai in the late 1990s, and she says the Art Foundation course has been one of the biggest influences on her career.

“I was taught by Peter Prendergast, and he was one of my biggest inspirations,” said Annie. “He really taught me to draw, but he also taught me to look at the world, and taught me that trick of ‘stop looking at your pencil and your paper’. I’ve carried that with me all my career.

“That’s what a lot of film work is, looking at the world. A lot of work in film is forgery. Peter Prendergast was an incredible teacher, and I also learned a lot from his son Owein, who is still there now. My time at Coleg Menai was completely formative for me.”

• Letters from the North Pole, written by Annie Atkins and illustrated by Fia Tobing, is available in bookshops and online.

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