How Stop-Motion Movies Are Animated at Aardman (2021) [video]

Modern puppetry cannot do away with CGI. The sets and the movement is too complex, the effects are too complex, too.

In the very first seconds of the report you see a complex animatronic cat moving across a blue ackground that will be used to cut away scaffolding, stitch together different parts of the movie etc.

What they mean to say, I believe is "we want to do as much in camera as possible, and use CGI as the last resort". That's why they specifically mention that snowflakes are hand-animated in-camera.

I take their point: all the material used in compositing was filmed/shot. Digital compositing, while it feels a bit like cheating seems like an acceptable nod to modern tech in order to have additional atmosphere (rain, fire, snow) that would be nearly impossible otherwise (or if possible, wildly ballooning the budget).

And other recent films using 3-d printing to create the many varied faces and posed hands of the "puppetoons" is acceptable as well.

When I watch the old "Rudolph" animated films I cringe a bit when they add the rotoscoped snow on top of the otherwise 3D animated figures/sets. Aardman seems to have struck the right balance.

You can actually see a short clip of them animating the fire in the video

It's deleted on submission in (I think) an effort to combat clickbait titles. Submitters can edit and re-add the "How" to titles.