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Prompted Puppets: Seed Drops In On East End Santa

Posted on Sunday, December 14, 2025

Directors Morgan Powell and Neil Kidney at Seed Animation in London give the AI holiday ad pot a stir with a fresh and fun blast of prompted puppetry starring East End Santa and his mate Pat Butcher (from the BBC soap opera EastEnders).

Morgan Powell and Neil Kidney: “After the Coke Christmas ad furor this year, we wanted to try our hand at a holiday AI spot. Our main goal was to test drive the AI hype machine, and find out what it’s good for and what it falls short at.

“Our main goal was to test drive the AI hype machine, and find out what it’s good for and what it falls short at.”

“But it was also to keep it firmly in the ‘use it as a tool’ box and not let it be in control of what we wanted to achieve. So with that in mind, we came up with the idea of East End Santa, a puppeteered miniature Santa in his own little world, performing to the camera.

“All preproduction was done in the traditional sense (by humans), then AI took over for the shot generation, then back into the hands of humans for post. It was important to us to make something that looks and feels authentic, and not settle for something because AI couldn’t quite get there.

“In this instance, it’s hard to knock AI – we made something that wouldn’t have been made otherwise, and whilst it’s not as fun as being on set with people creating something through traditional processes, there’s definitely a time and a place for it.”