Welcome to Maker Street, the home of the Häagen-Dazs Artisan Collection – six ice cream flavors developed in partnership with six small-batch food artisans from across the country.

In this film, we see a bike messenger collecting handmade treats from several artisans along idyllic Maker Street. He then takes all of these things to the last artisan on the street: the ice cream maker at the Häagen-Dazs. There, these carefully crafted cookies, candies and sauces are combined to create the delicious ice creams in the Artisan Collection.

Maker Street comes to life as a real place where all shared values, dedication to craftsmanship and attention to detail are the true marks of artisanship, not a company’s size or what they make.

As a form of homage to the handcrafted nature of our artisan partners’ products, we created Maker Street using stop-motion animation, a medium in which almost everything is created by hand.

To pay homage to the handcrafted nature of our artisan partners’ products, we chose to create Maker Street in stop-motion, because it is the only medium where nearly everything is created by hand. And it took many hands to create the beautiful world that is home to the Häagen-Dazs Artisan Collection.

The :60 film consists of eight unique sets and 226 props built specifically for Maker Street by 14 fabricators and designers. Every element was made, painted, affixed and put together by hand. These props range from ice cream cones to electric mixers to a bridge to cobblestone streets to whole buildings.

For the cast of 17 puppets, it took 16 designers, sculptors and armaturists to sculpt their facial features and hair; sew the puppets’ clothing; and creating props, such as shoes, jewelry and glasses.

The actual animation took four animators roughly 1750 hours to complete. This lengthy animation process produced approximately one second of animation every day, as it requires every single movement to be recorded in its own frame to achieve the desired fluidity of motion.

The end result is a seamless and smooth stop-motion animation that brings the values of artisanship to life on screen.