Christmas might seem far off still, but three Surrey artists spent the summer creating Christmas images to be ready for it.

Michele Miguel, the team leader, said there were originally four students hired to create the artwork for this year's fundraiser book, Twas the Night Before Christmas, but Emily Lee had to drop out. Miguel, Zoey Ahn and Seo-Yeun Kang picked up the slack to create all the images necessary for the second annual book project, which is produced in partnership with Guildford Town Centre.

While the project interprets the same poem as last year - technically called A Visit from St. Nicholas, but better known by its first line - the interpretation and artwork is completely original and markedly different.

And whereas last year's book sales benefited Surrey Public Library, the new edition is to benefit Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Another change this year was the process the students used. Miguel explained that because they are all at different schools with busy schedules, they set up a Facebook group and used Skype conferences to work collaboratively in producing a cohesive style of artwork.

"We would take our lines (broken up into sets of stanzas) and then figure out some thumbnail sketches of them," said Miguel, who is a third-year illustration major at Emily Carr.

Kang, a Clayton Heights grad now studying animation at Capilano, created six pages while the other two group members did five each to round out the book.

Ahn, a Grade 12 student at Earl Marriott, said Christmas is her favourite time of year.

"I saw another group of girls doing this project last year and I thought it would be really interesting," she said. "I've always wanted to do illustration covers for Christmas, especially Christmas. I thought, 'I gotta do this.'"

The artwork for the book is now complete, with the processing and printing stages getting underway for the November release date. ccooke@thenownewspaper.com

Twitter @carolyncooke1