The new year promises all kinds of enticing animated features, but few will have as unusual a pedigree as Klaus. The Santa Claus origin story, which came out in November, was picked up by Netflix after a lengthy development process. It thus became the streaming giant’s first self-produced animated movie, and the first 2d animated feature to receive a sizeable budget from a U.S. company in years. To top it all, it adopted a groundbreaking approach to lighting and texturing hand-drawn characters.
We’re capping off our in-depth coverage of the film with a video interview with Sergio Pablos, its director. Watch it below:
Pablos cut his teeth as a Disney artist in the 1990s — when it was “not a smart decision” to enter the industry, as he puts it — before returning to his native Spain and founding what is now SPA Studios. Even as he co-created the Despicable Me franchise and worked on other high-profile cg films, he never lost sight of hand-drawn animation’s potential, and it’s to this medium that he turned for Klaus, his directorial debut.
