Apple’s Christmas Inspired Commercial is NOT Stop Motion – But is Hand Built!

Apple’s recent commercial for the 2018 Christmas Holidays titled “Share Your Gifts” has been getting a lot of press in the media lately. Mostly stating that the commercial is a blend of stop motion and CGI. I’m here to tell you it is NOT stop motion, there is absolutely NO stop motion in the commercial, and in no way shape or form is this even remotely close to a stop motion production. However it is a beautiful commercial that utilizes hand built practical sets and a number of artist poured their life blood into producing this production on a tight schedule in time for the holidays.

I personally won’t go into a rant about how the media and public often get the stop motion / CGI animation genres mixed up all the time. I’ll save that for another day. What I will say is the integration of practical environments and CGI characters is something that should be explored more in the television and film industries. We can see that the level of detail in a practical set can be achieved faster than in a CGI environment. There are all sorts of advantages in using practical sets, props, and movements in a production that incorporates CGI into the production. It’s obvious that the cgi animation is great and that the artists who contributed to this production digitally did an amazing job. I’d also like to shoutout to the lighting and camera department for whom I’ve worked with. It wss good to see some of those talented and smiling faces from the past. Over all the crew did an amazing job and Apple has a beautiful commercial for the Holidays. Now go out and blast those silly news sources about mislabeling this commercial or sit back and watch the commercial and the making of below.