To make the spot as impactful as possible, the Mill+ team created a non-character based visual language divided into five different themes: paper crafted marigolds, decorative skulls — typical of Dia de los Muertos celebrations — hand lettering, ‘papel picador’ banners and golden leaf skulls. They then moved on to stop-motion animation, one frame at a time. From there, Lead Editor at The Mill Chicago, Charlotte Carr took the footage and sequenced and synced all of the hand-crafted vignettes to the original track paving the way for cel-animation.  

The result is nothing short of entrancing.