40 Puppets, Dozens of Sets and Zero Shortcuts: The Making of Suchard’s Most Human Christmas Film

Suchard, one of Spain’s most recognisable Christmas brands thanks to its beloved turrón chocolate, entered this year’s festive season wanting something different. After two years of glossy CGI, the brand approached its agency Ogilvy Spain with a brief that carried both weight and expectation: restore emotional warmth, reconnect with tradition, and build something that feels unmistakably human – yet unmistakably contemporary.

From the outset, Ogilvy felt the story needed more than pixels to achieve that. As creative directors Miguel Provencio and Víctor Vázquez explain, “From the start we felt this story needed to exist physically. Coming from two years of 3D animation, we wanted something warmer and more tactile, closer to how people actually experience Christmas.” This instinct led the agency toward stop motion – the painstaking, frame-by-frame craft that shaped cinematic history long before digital perfection.

To bring that world to life, Ogilvy teamed up with BOL Creative Production House, a craft-driven animation and direction studio based across Madrid and Barcelona, and Device, a Barcelona design and animation studio that co-led direction. For BOL’s creative director and Device’s director Guille Comin, the decision wasn’t just a tactical shift – it was a philosophical one. “We began to sense what this project could become,” he recalls of the early pitch. “If this story was meant to feel real, it had to be crafted by hand.”

Stop motion, to him, is a medium with soul. “What drew us immediately to stop motion was its tactile nature. The imperfections, the textures, and the warmth of physical materials all add a sense of authenticity that digital precision often can’t replicate.” BOL wasn’t drawn to it out of nostalgia, but because it aligns with what the studio stands for: “We love how the medium combines patience, artistry, and storytelling.” That sense of physicality defined every decision that followed.

Ogivly’s team reinforces how essential this was to the film’s emotional tone. “In stop motion the smallest things tell you the scene is alive,” say Miguel and Víctor. “A fold in a shirt changes slightly from frame to frame, a fibre moves on a character’s face, a bit of hair shifts because someone touched the puppet. Those tiny variations carry a quiet humanity you don’t have to build artificially.”

This, in a year of hyper-clean AI outputs, became a statement in itself. As Guille puts it, “We chose to remain fully handmade and deliberately imperfect – a decision that aligns with BOL’s belief in human-centred storytelling.” He sees stop motion as a counterweight to digital scale: “This approach positions stop motion as a counterbalance to the speed of AI-driven creation, reminding us that emotional connection comes from imperfection and authenticity… it relies on patience, cooperation and shared purpose – qualities that define both the medium and the creative people behind it.”

Ogilvy embraced these “mistakes” deliberately. “Crumbs on the table, a cup already used, worn tiles in the bar, slightly dirty walls in the airport, even a bit of paper on the floor,” they say. “These aren’t flaws. They’re what make a world feel inhabited.”

Suchard’s film features nearly 40 characters – an enormous number for stop motion, a medium where one puppet can take weeks to engineer. BOL faced the challenge by applying modular thinking to craftsmanship.

“The first step was creating a modular character system,” Guille explains. Seven master heads formed the foundation. “Starting from interchangeable elements like heads, we built seven ‘master’ characters that allowed us to design nearly 40 unique characters without overwhelming Pangur with the construction work.”

Pangur, the Valencia-based stop-motion workshop, then picked up this framework and meticulously built the puppets. The system reduced fabrication strain without compromising personality. “By having this modular system, they were able to focus on sewing the clothes or creating each hairstyle, while the bodies were reused in a way that still made it feel like we had forty completely different characters.”

The sets were just as demanding. BOL designed every room and environment with forensic detail, including the one that was later rebuilt for the live-action portion. Part of the plot revolves around pop artist Mafalda Cardenal, who performs a re-imagined version of the brand’s jingle at a piano. “Mafalda’s house, in particular, was filled with countless details that had to communicate the passage of time,” Guille says. “The television, the armchairs, the cuckoo clock, and every part of the decoration were drawn one by one.”

Because stop motion offers almost no flexibility once sets are built, “the concept work had to be extremely thorough because once building began, there was no room for multiple rounds of feedback.”

Ogilvy shared that rigour. “The craft couldn’t be decorative. It had to support the story,” Miguel and Víctor emphasise. They were uncompromising about the food – especially Suchard’s products. “The ‘turrón’ and the ‘bombones’ needed to feel absolutely true to the real thing, which is incredibly tricky at that scale.”

So Pangur tested materials meticulously until the miniatures felt edible.

Even the characters’ mouths were feats of engineering, hand-cut from metal sheets and held in place with tiny magnets inside the puppets’ heads so animators could change expressions frame by frame.

One of the standout scenes is the bar sequence – a love letter to Spanish everyday life.

Miguel and Víctor explain why it resonates: “They’re sharing chocolate with churros, something very typical here… Nothing feels designed for the camera. It feels observed.” The serviette holder, the opened sugar packet, the worn tiles – small details, but emotional shorthand for familiarity. “That familiarity gives the moment a warmth only hand-made craft can create.”

For BOL, the emotional spark of the film surfaced even earlier – before a single frame was shot.

“At the very initial character design stage, the potential of the project was already very obvious,” Guille says. “When the characters work, when they’re able to communicate what you need, that means a big part of the job is already done.” The animators were so energised, “we almost had to hold them back,” he exclaims.

The CDs felt their defining moment when they saw the grandparents dancing under the mistletoe. “Watching it move for the first time was a genuine moment for us… that’s when we felt the film was going to work.”

Authenticity was essential, and the team at Ogilvy insisted it couldn’t feel like an artificial tapestry of diversity. “It wasn’t added on top,” Miguel and Víctor say. “It’s simply how people celebrate Christmas today, and how people inside the team celebrate it too.” Scenes draw directly from lived experience. Families at home, families travelling. Different generations creating rituals.

BOL deepened this realism internally: “Within our team, we have people born in different parts of Spain who were able to contribute a lot when recreating scenes like Puerta del Sol or the ‘Tió.’”

They also brought in external cultural advisors when stakes were high. “In areas where there was a risk of misinterpretation, we brought in cultural advisors, as we did for the Zambomba in Jerez.” Some moments emerged from team members’ personal lives – the airport scene and the ultrasound came directly from the team.

Guille jokes that one location couldn’t be validated: “Unfortunately, none of us could travel to Cancún to make sure that scene was completely accurate…”

Music has always shaped Suchard’s holiday storytelling. Miguel and Víctor emphasise its importance:

“The jingle is a big part of Suchard’s history. In Spain it’s one of those melodies everyone recognises instantly.”

The film seeds the melody subtly – through piano notes, through a retro TV spot embedded inside the stop-motion world, “almost hidden in the background,” the CDs note. But the modern lift came from Mafalda Cardenal, making her acting debut. “She treated the song with real care,” Miguel and Víctor say. “Her voice makes the jingle feel fresh without losing what made it iconic, and that connection between generations was something we really wanted.”

With so many partners – Ogilvy in Madrid, BOL and Device in Barcelona, Pangur in Valencia, Hogarth on the live-action side – alignment had to be immaculate. “On productions like this, collaboration is everything,” Guille says. His team alone was responsible for more than 62 seconds of the film’s total 90 (including both transitions between live action and animation).

Pangur’s stop-motion director Vicente Mallols describes what made success possible: “We were lucky to have incredible pre-production material, which made it easy to achieve a result we are truly satisfied with… Everything was so well planned that each phase came with perfect guides, from props to lighting and colour grading… we aimed to stay as faithful as possible to the pre-production scene planning.”

The agency team echoes that. “We were fitting a very artisanal process into the timelines of a commercial campaign,” Miguel and Víctor say. Weekly meetings, hyper-clear calendars and in-person workshop visits kept the project on track. “Everyone protected the craft and no one looked for shortcuts.”

They add warmly: “I’ll take the chance to say it: this only worked because everyone pushed in the same direction.” Otherwise, they admit, “this could have become a real mess, and instead it turned into something we’re genuinely proud of.”

Across agency and studios, the shared belief is that craft is still one of advertising’s most powerful emotional tools.

Miguel and Víctor summarise it beautifully: “In a moment when everything can be made perfectly clean with AI, keeping those small irregularities felt essential. They’re what make the story breathe.”

Guille closes with a philosophy that sits at the heart of the project – and perhaps the future of craft in commercial storytelling: “Handmade animation connects people not just through images, but through effort, collaboration, and care. This year’s Suchard campaign reaffirms that craftsmanship is not the opposite of innovation – it’s its most enduring form."