Klaus (2019)

[Baron Ouroboros]

I was pleased to see this trailer:




Klaus' premise seems interesting, to say the least! I'd quite like to here people's thoughts on it. Pet theory is that Mr. Klaus and the postman upset the town's socioeconomic paradigm by freely distributing toys to all the children, which upsets the local hierarchy and drives the conflict of the plot.

In all seriousness, what are your thoughts? I personally hope this movie ends up being wholesome, although admittedly I've got no metric for that likelyhood-- admittedly western animation isn't really my thing.

 

[firefossil]

Just saw it on Netflix. As a Christmas Story, its an acceptable one, just enough freshness to be its own take while still feeling familiar. It probably should've phrased its message as "one kind act begets another" rather than "one selfless act". However I have to agree with TV Tropes that its true feature is its unique artstyle:

Most notable is the film's one-of-a-kind visual style, which applies realistic shading and volumetric lighting to "paperless" hand-drawn animation, giving 2D drawings a distinctly 3-dimensional look (sort of an inversion of Paperman's technique). According to Pablos, he believed that 2D feature animation had gone out of style largely because it hadn't progressed much since digital ink-and-paint, which could only make characters look like stickers pasted onto backgrounds and paled in comparison to CGI. Inversely, he believed CGI was becoming old hat, as there was no further ground to break once it had achieved the utmost photorealism. This new technique was his studio's way of not only integrating the 2D characters into 3D environments better, but also keeping hand-drawn animation alive while allowing it to progress technologically into the 21st century.

Click to shrink...

The director said that his objective wasn't to bring 2D animation back... but forward. The movie comes across as a thesis statement for how to go about doing it. The art in the movie lacks outlines typical of 2D works and has a distinct feeling of depth, at times I honestly believed it was 3D CGI with 2D cel shaded effects over it. In actuality its closer to the reverse.

I hope that more movies follow in its foot-steps. The art style used here could be used to tell a lot of stories with a lot of aesthetics, its not limited to just Christmas Stories.