AFT 171

Entertainment Design
Nived Kadavil
12010214
NDM47
Table of Contents
SL.NO PA R T I C U L A R S PAG E N O.

1 Abstract 5

2 Acknowledgements 6

3 Making Process 7

3.1 Concept 8

3.2 Art Style 10

3.3 Tools and Techniques 15

4 Role in Production Pipeline 22

4.1 Pre Production Phase 22

4.2 Production Phase 23

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Table of Contents
SL.NO PA R T I C U L A R S PAG E N O.

4.3 Post Production Phase 24

5 Role in the Studio Pipeline 25

5.1 Concept and Storyboard Department 25

5.2 Visual Department 26

5.3 Audio Department 28

5.4 Compositing Department 29

5.5 Editing Department 30

6 Relevant career opportunities 31

6.1 2D Animator 31

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Table of Contents
SL.NO PA R T I C U L A R S PAG E N O.

6.2 2D FX Artist 31

6.3 CG Supervisor 32

6.4 Compositing Artist/ Supervisor 32

6.5 3d/ 2d Rigger 33

6.6 Tools Developer / Pipeline Technical Director 33

7 Conclusion 34

8 References 36

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 1. Abstract
• This report is focused on documenting the lessons learned from analyzing the 2D animated
movie Klaus (2019), directed by Sergio Pablos. It also strives to shine a light upon the
intricacies of developing a 2D animated feature film, all the way from conceptualizing to the
finished product displayed in front of an audience.

• The conventional animated filmmaking follows a dedicated timeline, wherein it passes through
several departments of a studio. The report is directed towards reconstructing this timeline.
Simultaneously, it is necessary to understand the problems faced by the filmmakers and the
solutions they came up with, while innovating with their artform, to obtain a complete
understanding of the struggles of creating a feature length animated film.

• The findings are presented in the style of a post-mortem analysis so that the reader may easily
comprehend the novel styles and techniques used by the studio during the production. The
post-mortem style of approach was found to be effective in identifying and articulating the
practicality of investing time, effort, and money into the massive endeavor of creating and
distributing such films.
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2. Acknowledgements

I would like to take a moment to thank my course coordinator, Sumit Basena, for all his help throughout the
development and delivery of this report. I would also like to thank my peers for all of their help and feedback during
the post-mortem.

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3. Making Process

• 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.

• Because the director Sergio Pablos’s story was about the origin of Santa
Claus, it appealed to nostalgia. And he thought a nostalgic, 2D animation
style like 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.

• His team tested out a new method of lighting 2D characters and released a
Fig 3a: Klaus teaser (2015)
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.

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3.1. Concept

• “When Smeerensburg's new postman, Jesper, befriends

toymaker Klaus, their gifts melt an age-old feud and deliver a
sleigh full of holiday traditions.”

• It was the director Sergio Pablos’s vision to tell the origin story of
the most famous Christmas figure, Santa Claus himself. This is
a separate telling of the tale that is in no way related to the
famous Saint Nicholas story which is believed to be the source
of Santa Claus mythos.

Fig 3.1a Klaus pitchbook concept art

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3.1. Concept

• With this reimagining of Claus’ story, Dir. Pablos sought to

humanize the character and provide interesting explanations to
all the fantastical powers that the character is believed to have.
The film is an exercise in stripping a well-known character to the
bare essentials of the human emotions they possess and how
impactful that can be.

• In director Sergio Pablos’s own words, “A true selfless act

always sparks another. The whole film is just to convey the
most poetic version of that message”.

Fig 3.1b Klaus pitchbook concept art

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 3.2. Art Style

• Klaus Productions Designers Marcin Jakubowsky and Szymon

Biernacki were charged with the monumental task of creating
the visual style for the film. For the film's look, the studio
sought to overcome some of the technical limitations that
traditional animation had, focusing on organic and volumetric
lighting and texturing to give the film a unique look, while
maintaining a hand-crafted feel.

Fig 3.2a A still from Klaus

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3.2. Art Style

• Artist Torsten Schrank developed all

the characters from numerous trial and
error sketches he made for them. From
each iteration, he kept adding a bit of
anything that stood out as a character
trait that they would posses. The team
was very conscious to not make the
characters too generic or easier
animation work.

Fig 3.2b Character design sheets

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 3.2. Art Style

• The environment consists of mainly 3 locations,

The Royal Postal Academy, Smeerensburg town
and Klaus’s cabin. Each of them required
different shape language.

• The postal academy is designed with a lot of

verticality and repetition to enhance the sense of
order and discipline that permeates the setting.
Fig 3.2c Postal Academy design

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 3.2. Art Style

• Smeerensburg on the other hand is designed to be

hostile and closed off in every way. It is composed
of squeezed triangle shapes and no perfectly
parallel lines. There is tension in the structure and
all the buildings are teetering from the lack of
balance while simultaneously competing for space.
Even the snow build-up surrounding the
environment is pointy and aggressive.

Fig 3.2d Smeerensburg design

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 Fig 3.2e Smeerensburg design at earlier and later portions of the film

3.2. Art Style

• As the film goes on and the protagonist gets

comfortable with the town and the townsfolk, the
environment also reflects that by relaxing its visual
language to accommodate more curvy and softer
shapes into the environment. The drab colors of the
scenery is replaced with more saturated and vibrant
colors.

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 3.3. Tools And Techniques

• Proprietary tools from Les films du Poisson Rouge, a French company in Angoulême,
were used to allow the team to produce a variety of visual development styles, with
the aim of getting away from the standardized style of "characters looking like stickers
put on painted backgrounds."

• In a traditional approach animated characters are just flat cels put on a fully rendered
backdrop. If there’s any shadow on them it’s either entirely sharp or uniformly soft.
This makes the character flat and detached from the background. The team found a
way to apply different aspects of light onto the character i.e., shadows, bounced light, Fig 3.3a Les Films Du Poisson Rouge logo

ambient light, skin translucency etc. This technique makes the characters visually
appealing, volumetric, and fully integrated with the surrounding background. “Klaus” is
the first project using this technique.

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Fig 3.3b Traditional vs KLaS Lighting Approach

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 3.3. Tools And Techniques

• They developed a tool 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.“

• 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.

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 3.3. Tools And Techniques

• 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.

• It's important that the backgrounds also look three-dimensional and follow the
same lighting pattern as the characters, so they used "colour keys" as a guide.
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.

Fig 3.3c live action references

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Fig 3.3d Colour Keys by Samuel Smith 1 19
Fig 3.3e Colour Keys by Samuel Smith 2 20
Fig 3.3f Colour Keys by Samuel Smith 3 21
 4. Role In The Production Pipeline

4.1 Pre Production Phase

• The concept of the film first materialized into a pitchbook
created by Sergio Pablos and illustrated by Pascal Campion.

• Once the green light was received from Netflix, the team
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.
Fig 4.1a Klaus storyboards

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 4. Role In The Production Pipeline

4.2 Production Phase

• Animating the characters and colouring 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 initial sketches were very rough. But there was a clean-up stage in
which artists refined the drawings with crisp, bold lines. Then they painted
the characters with basic flat colours. 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.

• The sound design comes into play soon after the animation is done.
Proper sound design ensures that the visuals on screen carry more
punch. The voice cast, foley artists and composers play a major role in
Fig 4.2a Rough to Final
the final feel of the film.
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 4. Role In The Production Pipeline

4.3 Post Production Phase

• Once the character animations and background illustrations

are done, it is time to merge them. The compositing stage will
ensure that the film has a cohesive look to it and all the
elements that goes into making the imagery sits well with
each other.

• Finally, the film is edited by cutting together scenes to have a

smooth flow and keep a pace that is easy for the audience to
follow. This is the final stage in the pipeline before presenting
the film in front of an audience. Fig 4.2a Postproduction

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 5. Role In The Studio Pipeline

5.1 Concept and Storyboard Department

• Every movie begins as an idea. Director Sergio Pablos created a

massive pitchbook for his idea of a Santa Claus origin story with
the help of illustrations by Pascal Campion to pitch the film to
potential investors. Production designers Marcin Jakubowsky and
Szymon Biernacki were attached to the film early on for lookdev.

• The storyboard departments swung into action once the script was
ready. The team has experimented with a lot of ways for the story
to unfold, creating animatics for each story thread to test out it’s
strengths and weaknesses. Fig 5a Unused concept art

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 5. Role In The Studio Pipeline

5.2 Visual Department

• Once the script is solid, the storyboards are handed off to the animators
who creates rough animations for the sequences.

• The animation passes through several departments and artists like

modelers, pencilers, inkers, cel colorists, and in this case, lighting artists.

• The layout team starts working simultaneously on creating the

backgrounds

• The voice cast is assembled, and lines are recorded usually at the earlier
stage so that the voice actors have the freedom to improvise and play with
their characters. This greatly influences the animators’ work later on. Fig. 5b Artists working on animation
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 5. Role In The Studio Pipeline

5.2 Visual Department

• Since the film is experimenting with a never-before used method of

shading, proprietary tools need to be developed to achieve this. SPA
studios partnered up with Les Film Du Poisson Rouge to create the
KLaS software to make the animation process efficient.

• This is done since the Nuke software modification by Jakubowski that

was used to create the 2015 Klaus teaser was too labor intensive to
carry out such a process.
Fig. 5c Still from Klaus teaser

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 5. Role In The Studio Pipeline

5.3 Audio Department

• The audio section will consist of background scorers,
composers, instrument players, foley artists, sound
mixers etc. They play a crucial role in the production to
add the necessary counterpart of the visuals on screen.

• While composers and scorers create the music that

elevates the emotions on screen, foley artists brings
believability to the animation by complimenting the
motion with necessary sound effects

• The production designers oversees all the activity and

comes in with necessary alterations and feedback. Fig. 5d Studio Orchestra
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 5. Role In The Studio Pipeline

5.4 Compositing Department

• The compositors are necessary to marry the character

animations to the background layout. Different artists work in
different parts of the movie, when it comes to visuals. It is the
compositing department’s job to make sure everything looks
cohesive and done by a single artist.

• Compositors are supposed to correct any errors that might

occur between interdepartmental workflow.

• The Foundry’s Nuke is the industry standard for compositing.

Studios might also use Adobe After Effects to composit.
Fig. 5e Nuke Software

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 5. Role In The Studio Pipeline

5.5 Editing Department

• It is said that a film is made twice, once in the camera, and once in the editing room.

• Here even if we substitute the camera for the hands of the artist, the statement still stands. The editing department is
responsible for creating the final output, the one that is displayed to the audience.

• It is their responsibility to obtain all the materials from every other departments to piece together the film complete with
scenes, audio fx, dialogues, music, and everything in between.

• Production supervisors will constantly monitor every departments to make sure that there a smooth flow of work and there
is no hiccups in the pipeline.

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 6. Relevant Career Opportunities

6.1 2D Animator
• As the job title describes, the job of the 2D animator is to create character animations with convincing motion and performances
by Film Director’s guidance through the Animation Supervisor and Lead. They are responsible for animating the bulk of the
movie. Even inside the animator’s position, it can be split off into rough animators, clean up artists, colorists etc.

6.2 2D FX Artist
• The 2D FX department is responsible for creating the 2D visual effects of the movie, from smoke and fire to wet hair and objects
colliding. The job consists in following the directions the 2D FX Supervisor to create the effects of the film. 2D FX Artists should
have a strong sense of design and graphic appeal.

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 6. Relevant Career Opportunities

6.3 CG Supervisor
• The CG Supervisor participates in crafting a pipeline and use of Cg that support the story. Through the establishment of rigorous
technical guidelines, she/he supports the creative vision by helping tailor a pipeline and workflows that are effective in delivering
imagery. Since there is a blend of 2D and 3D in most movies nowadays, a CG supervisor to oversee all of the CGI works has
become more of a necessity.

6.4 Compositing Artist/ Supervisor

• Compositors create the final image of a frame, shot or sequence. They take different digital elements; like the animations,
background plates, graphics and special effects (SFX) and put them together to make a believable picture.

• The Compositing Supervisor is responsible for the leadership of the compositing team and contributes to the establishment of the
look of the final picture.
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 6. Relevant Career Opportunities

6.5 3d/ 2d Rigger

• A rigger is supposed to build and maintain high-quality, high-performance animation rigs. They may need to prepare both rigging
systems for Character, Set and Props. Rigging makes the animation process easier and less time consuming, whether it be in 2D
or 3D. They play a supporting role for the animators.

. 6.6 Tools Developer / Pipeline Technical Director

• Pipeline TDs are the orchestrators of the technology; they make sure that all studio members have the tools they need to create
the shots on their to-do list, and if not, they code them. Pipelined TDs must also be prepared to solve technical problems as they
arise to ensure all assets flow down the pipe as smoothly as possible and no artist is kept from performing their work.

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 7. Conclusion

• The film presents a revolutionary technique that pushes the limitations of traditional animation to new heights, all while
crafting a heart-warming story that has been described as a new Christmas Classic by both audiences and critics. It received
seven Annie Awards (including Best Feature), a BAFTA for Best Animated Film, two Quirino Awards and was nominated for
the Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature Film, as well as several nominations at the VES and the Goya Awards.

• The validation of the effort put into making this film lies in director Sergio Pablos recognizing that 3d animation is not an
evolution of 2d, but rather a split. He believes that 2d animation is as relevant as 3d and what makes or breaks the
animation, is the story that the animation is supposed to tell. Sergio Pablos along with writers Zach Lewis and Jim Mahoney
found the story that is befitting such a medium.

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 7. Conclusion

• The recent progress in CG visual development has shown that the tools of the trade has immensely improved to
accommodate even more variety of styles. So, it is only inevitable that these improvements will also move to aid and
enhance the traditional hand drawn animation techniques. Klaus is simultaneously the culmination and the springboard of
that movement. This film is sure to inspire numerous other projects that innovates within the medium and be a milestone for
aspiring animators and artists.

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 8. References

1. Samuel Smith Artstation account (https://www.artstation.com/samsamstudio)

2. How Netflix's 'Klaus' Made 2D Animation Look 3D | Movies Insider (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlU49dJhfcw)

3. KLAUS | Behind the Scenes: Defining the Klaus Style (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWbEYXqCHxA)

4. TORSTEN SCHRANK CHARACTER DESIGN (https://torschrank.com/klaus-film/)

5. MARCIN JAKUBOWSKI (https://www.mjakubowski.art)

6. Book Preview: ‘Klaus: The Art Of The Movie’ (Exclusive Gallery) By ALEX DUDOK DE WIT
(https://www.cartoonbrew.com/books/book-preview-klaus-the-art-of-the-movie-exclusive-gallery-182718.html)

7. Klaus Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_(film))

8. Luis Mejía Behance account (https://www.behance.net/gallery/88677005/KLAUS-Layout-Background-Painting)

9. SPA Studio website (https://thespastudios.com/en/)

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