Kristijan made 3D Santa strech and sqeeze vertically for this shot. I don't think there's an armature in the World that can do that. However, I liked the effect too much to discard it. So, I decided to scratchbuild additions to armature in order to achieve the result. Wasn't easy, but in this doodle above I cracked it. I used two long screws for lifting the thorso, and two more for lifting lower body.

Removing Santa's head for handling eyes and face (beard) animation was tricky. Just as on 3D rendering at the top of this page, Santa's head had to be buried particulary low and deep into the body for profile shots, where this is obvious. That's why the sqared pin from the armature wasn't easily accesible for returning the head on it.