<P> Production on the episode officially began in October 2011 at Los Angeles, California, after several months of research and development . The animators worked closely with executive producer Paul Tibbitt, creator Stephen Hillenburg, and creative director Vincent Waller to ensure the cartoon characters were properly translated into three - dimensional puppets . Hillenburg and Tibbitt provided hands - on feedback on the production on a weekly basis . "They'd check out the weeklies and go back and forth with us on the various gags (...) It was really a pleasurable experience when they came to visit, because we come from the same planet . It all felt very easy and natural," Walsh said . </P> <P> About 30 people--whom Walsh described "...seemed to be thrilled to work on the show"--worked on the making of the episode over at Screen Novelties . Walsh described the initial stage of production as "a very busy period for all of us...We came in at about 8: 30 in the morning and didn't leave until midnight some days . But it all zipped by pretty quickly ." He said that they "felt pretty lucky because usually executives involved with productions look at the stop - motion process as annoying, but on this special, they were very jazzed and gung - go about it ." To keep the production crew in the Christmas spirit, six months worth of Christmas music was played, which included 83 versions of The Nutcracker suite . According to Finnegan, it took about five months to shoot . </P> <P> Caballero and Walsh had conflicts on making sure the stop motion version of Bikini Bottom will resemble the 2D world of the series . Caballero said that "We didn't want to make exact sculptural copies of the cartoon drawings and layouts, just because it might've ended up feeling too' perfect' or something . So we chose to re-appropriate real world objects as much as possible ." Art director Kelly Mazurowski focused on "digging through salvage yards", picking the right materials to be used in the set . Caballero described this process as "' puppetizing' the world of Bikini Bottom ." </P> <P> Six sets were constructed on which 60 pounds of baking soda were used as snow (the crew tried to use real snow but it melted), 42 pounds of glitter were used to cover the background, and 20 boxes of breakfast cereal were used to cover the coral rocks . Over 38 different types of foam were used to make the set pieces and the characters' bodies and heads . To render SpongeBob's pineapple house, palm fronds from a tree in a school yard were used . Other props and materials used were an actual starfish, three Christmas trees (for the Patchy the Pirate's Winter Wonderland scenes), six boxes of puff cereal (to create the fruitcake inside SpongeBob's mouth), 21 pounds of googly eyes (for rivets, texture pieces, knobs, etc .), 22 pounds of woodchips (to create Sandy's treedome floor), and 24 bunches of craft flowers (to create the parade float). </P>

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