The Mill Returns To Bring Starface’s Hand-Drawn Animated Universe to Life

When Starface set out to launch its latest campaign, the brief was clear: create a world that felt joyful, expressive and unmistakably on-brand — without losing the handmade charm that defines the skincare label’s identity. To bring that vision to life, the brand turned to The Mill, inviting the studio in at the earliest stages of development to help shape a cast of animated characters that could exist seamlessly alongside live action.

The result is a mixed-media campaign led by hand-drawn animation, playful storytelling and a cast of instantly loveable creatures — from flying turtles to curious kittens — all interacting with Iris Law in a way that feels both whimsical and grounded. Built using traditional animation techniques and guided by a deeply collaborative process, the project reflects a renewed focus on craft, character and creative partnership.

The Mill’s executive producer Stefano Salvini tells LBB how the campaign came together, maintaining brand integrity, and what the project says about the studio’s next chapter.

LBB> At what stage were you brought onto the Starface project?

Stefano> We were brought into this project at the very early stages, just as Starface decided to start exploring and designing the characters for their new campaign. They were about to start shooting in L.A. at the end of November 2025 and so, in parallel, we began developing these really cute characters.

LBB> How did you approach developing the illustration and animation style for Starface, and what were the key references or starting points for building that visual language?

Stefano> The Starface creative team provided us with references from classic traditional animated movies to more contemporary manga, gaming and film references, also sprinkled some real pictures of cats they loved to get inspiration from.  The core idea needed to be supported by characters that would be grounded in the real world yet act surreal and be “cute and dreamy”. Together with Ross Urien, Creative Director, and Andrew Brooks, veteran of character design and animation, we started exploring multiple features across all the different characters we were tasked to create. We designed flying sea-turtles, cheeky kittens, the most huggable panda ever and, of course, gave life to key characters in the story, the Tiny Star’ helpers.

We produced up to a dozen variations per character until reaching the right balance and finding all the elements and traits the creative team were happy with. It was certainly an extremely fun and creative process!

LBB> Starface has such a distinct, playful world — what considerations did you make to ensure the animation felt true to the brand?

Stefano> Starface and The Mill agreed on a very traditional, human driven, approach, so we went down the pencil & paper route, keeping all process very craft based since day one. Both Marketing and Creative heads at Starface were aligned on achieving something that would feel very authentic, maybe even slightly rough, but playful, honest and self-confident, keeping it close to the Brand style and messaging.

All the lines we used in designing and animating the characters are round and soft, there are no harsh edges, straight lines or anything that can feel subconsciously aggressive in any way, unless of course you fear flying sea turtles popping star-shaped bubbles! Also the drawn lines of the characters were intentionally sketched and not perfect, as were the colour bleeding outside the line and the shadows. The colour palette used is all on brand and true to the products, matching the new Tiny Stars stickers the campaign is focused on.

LBB> Tell me about the creation of some of the campaign’s animated characters — like the turtles, kittens and panda — and how you worked to shape their personalities?

Stefano> That part is always the most fascinating of any character based projects. We really wanted the Creative Team at Starface to give us direction on the characters to make sure we were staying on brand and truthful to the original idea. One of the most descriptive scenes to work on was Iris and the kittens as we had 3x kittens on screen at the same time, and we had to make sure their personalities would be easy to read while staying as individual but close to the audience as possible, so you can see the calm, relaxed and layback one just sitting on Iris’ arm, with some of his legs movement inspired by my actual cats when I lift them, you can then see the cheeky, mischievous one, looking for an adventure and sticking the sticker on Iris’ face after climbing on her back, and then the little clumsy kitten, looking for cuddles on the ground. We were really trying to pair simple and direct actions to easy emotional readability.

LBB> With Iris Law at the centre of the mixed-media campaign, what sort of technical and creative challenges did you come across while integrating animation into the live-action footage?

Stefano> Iris was directed on set to look and react to the invisible characters but, at that time, we didn’t have anything for her to go by yet. So, while shooting, the script was really the only reference for her in terms of timings and actions. We then had to reverse engineer it a little bit and when the edit selects were picked, we made sure to animate to the right beat and picking the right points for the main key interactive actions and eye contacts.

LBB> Were there any particularly tricky, surprising or standout moments during the shoot or post-production?

Stefano> It doesn’t happen that often that we get asked to produce an entire project using traditional animation techniques. We were very lucky to have an extremely experienced team on this project, capable of really pulling emotions out of few lines and it was absolutely incredible to see that in action. About half-way through the production schedule, we saw the first animation, and it doesn’t matter how long you have been doing this for, it’s always a magical moment when you see those drawings suddenly coming to life.

Due to the nature of the project, towards the final phase there were a lot of moving parts, Matthew Campbell, Head of Design, was making sure the creative consistency was there every day as the schedule was quite challenging and more people were coming on board, also adding in the team some of our amazing artists from our studio in Paris. We managed to deliver on time also thanks to the great team at Starface that trusted us on this throughout.

LBB> As one of the first campaigns to emerge from the rebooted The Mill, how does this project reflect where the studio is heading — and what kind of work can we expect to see next?

Stefano> Craft, creativity and experience are the values you get from The Mill. We are working more closely with our Brand clients and are establishing creative partnerships at the very early stages in order to have the ability to truly understand and help support the needs and visions of our clients. Collaboration is at the heart of all our work, and we’re keen to continue that theme through our upcoming projects, while cultivating deeper relationships with clients and partners.