Sergio Pablos Project ‘Klaus’ Is Moving Forward with Toon Boom as Tech Partner

Sergio Pablos, who made waves earlier this year with his game-changing hand-drawn trailer for Klaus, has signed a technology collaboration agreement with Toon Boom Animation for the upcoming feature. The announcement was made by Toon Boom this morning.

For Klaus, which is currently in development and slated for a 2019 release, Pablos’s Madrid-based SPA Studios will work closely with Toon Boom to integrate its flagship product Toon Boom Harmony into SPA’s feature film pipeline. Harmony will be the primary software used for the production, and SPA’s creative and technical teams will build new tools to push the software’s capabilities. The original Klaus trailer was made with TVPaint as well as proprietary tools that Pablos’s team developed in-house.

Klaus, which will be an all-ages holiday comedy, will continue to push in the direction explored in the trailer, with complex, interactive lighting and sophisticated texturing styles.

“The studio is using a hybrid technique to create visuals,” Pablos said in a statement. “We do not see this project as simply another 2D animated film. Our goal was to find solutions to overcome the technical limitations which prevented us from achieving a traditional and classic animated style.”

“We’re just getting started, but the possibilities are very exciting,” Pablos continued. “If your intention is to put something that feels hand-crafted on the screen, there’s no shorter path than starting from a hand-crafted medium.”