When the animation process
for Netflix's "Klaus" began,
it looked something like this.
It eventually started looking
like a pretty impressive 2D film.
But then the animators
went one step further
to create a film that looked like this.
Suddenly the characters
looked three-dimensional.
But unlike most animated
movies these days,
the characters in "Klaus" aren't CGI
and can't even be considered 3D.
It's all just a trick of the light.
About 300 people, including 40 animators,
worked on the movie "Klaus,"
which took over two years to make.
And it was completed under the wire,
just one month before
it premiered on Netflix.
So, why did it take so many
people and so much time?
To understand, we have to go back to 2010,
long before "Klaus" was
nominated for an Academy Award,
to when director Sergio
Pablos came up with the idea.
Because his story was about
the origin of Santa Claus,
it appealed to nostalgia.
And he thought a nostalgic,
2D animation style
like we saw in the '90s Disney films
would be a better fit for the story.
But he also wanted to advance the look,
so his team at SPA Studios in Madrid
added a few new crucial steps
to the animation process.
Sergio Pablos: I never looked
at 3D as an evolution of 2D.
I looked at it as a split,
like there's a new way
of making animation now.
Narrator: First, they
storyboarded the script
and made a cut using temporary
voices for the characters.
They swapped these out later
once the real cast was recorded.
The next step was layout,
where the team designed backgrounds
and figured out the
placement of the cameras.
Animating the characters
and coloring the backgrounds
happened simultaneously.
The end goal was to have both
blend together seamlessly
and look like they're
part of the same world.
The characters were all hand
drawn using digital tablets
and a program called Harmony by Toon Boom.
The animators used
live-action reference videos
of themselves as a guide.
The initial sketches were very rough,
as you can see here.
But there was a cleanup stage
in which artists refined the drawings
with crisp, bold lines.
Then they painted the characters
with basic flat colors.
Here, everything still looks very 2D,
but they will soon bring
the characters to life
with a very important addition
usually reserved for 3D animation:
lighting.
His team tested out a new method
of lighting 2D characters
and released a two-minute, 30-second-long
proof-of-concept teaser back in 2015.
The proof of concept looked good
and secured them a deal with Netflix,
but the process was too labor intensive.
So they partnered with a French company
called Les Films du Poisson Rouge
to help advance the technology,
which they called KLaS, short
for Klaus Light and Shadow.
Poisson Rouge was able to make
the tool much more efficient
and easier for the artists to work with.
The KLaS tool allows the
artists to paint with light
using a number of
different types of lighting
in various combinations,
like "key light" and "ambient light."
With 3D CGI, light is added
automatically to objects,
but it's trickier with 2D.
Pablos: Well, with the
lines, with drawings,
the computer needs a certain level of AI
to even understand that this
line corresponds to this line
and this hand is also this hand.
Narrator: The software tracks
movement of the characters
so the light and shadows
will move with it.
The program takes a very educated guess,
but it's not 100% accurate,
so the artists can go in
and fine-tune it by hand.
Painting with light allowed the artists
to get creative with details
down to the tiniest
reflections in their eyes,
as you can see here.
The team used lighting not
only to make the characters
feel more real,
but also to help tell the story.
For example, when Jesper is
handing out papers to the kids
like a drug dealer,
he's always standing in the dark
to illustrate his shady behavior.
And when he's exposed at the
end of the film by his father,
he's the only one standing in the light,
while the others are in the dark.
Inspiration for detailed
lighting techniques
came from movies and TV shows,
like using just a sliver of
light to illuminate a character
similar to this scene in "Apocalypse Now."
And this scene, when
Jesper confronts the bully,
was inspired by "Breaking Bad."
It's important that the backgrounds
also look three-dimensional
and follow the same lighting
pattern as the characters,
so they used "color keys" as a guide.
Pablos: They're quick doodles, you know,
they don't have a lot of detail,
but they tell you exactly
what the light direction is
and how it's gonna affect both
characters and backgrounds.
Narrator: For example,
this color keys shows
how Jesper and Alva will be backlit
by the sun coming through the window.
And this one shows a
progression of how the light
will change on Alva as
she steps towards Jesper.
To make the backgrounds pop
and appear 3D like the characters,
the animators used several
different techniques,
such as multiplanes, where you
have layers on top of layers
to give the illusion of depth.
The team created a total
of 3,160 scenic layouts
for the movie.
After they'd merged the
characters with the backgrounds,
they used a second major step
that really gave the 3D characters
that intricate detail
to bring them to life:
texture.
With another tracking tool,
they used contour, lighting, and motion
to add various effects to
specific parts of a character.
Pablos: So now you could say, well,
I don't want a lot of
roughness on the skin,
but I want the coat to feel rougher.
Narrator: For example,
they can make them look
like an oil painting or a watercolor.
These textures are subtle,
but if you look closely, you
can notice the difference.
In the end, the characters
looked much more 3D
and like a part of their environment,
as opposed to looking like stickers
on top of an elaborate painting.
Pablos: And that's what throws people off
when they say, "This is 3D,"
because it's volume and it's
moving and it has texture.
But it's really a combination of the light
and the texture that makes that illusion.
Narrator: The final stage
is final composition,
in which any last-minute
details are added to the image,
like particles.
While the majority of the
film followed the 2D process,
the animators did use 3D models
for some characters and objects
and combined the two seamlessly.
And even though these
were created using CGI,
they were lit the same way
as the 2D characters were:
by hand.
Pablos: There's things that
benefit from being drawn
because they feel more organic,
and there's, you know,
things that are not
supposed to look organic.
There's things that are
supposed to look solid,
like wagons and doors and props,
and it's really hard to
make it feel consistent
and solid through drawing.
Narrator: If you look
closely, Jesper's wagon is 3D,
and so are some of the reindeer.
Pablos: Whenever the
reindeers had to do something,
it was particularly challenging for 3D
to look right with the 2D.
We just animate the reindeers in 2D,
and sometimes we would
animate one reindeer in 2D
and the rest in the shot in 3D.
Narrator: Scenes like this chase scene
at the end of the film
so seamlessly combine 2D and 3D elements
that it can be difficult
to tell which is which.
Pablos: There was a shot where Jesper
lifts a plate cover at one point,
and I commented on how
good the integration
of that 3D plate cover
looked with the 2D actor,
and they said, "Oh, no,
no, that's actually 2D,
we just painted it to look like metal."
