Matt Braly, creator of Amphibia and contributor to Gravity Falls and Steven Universe, has joined the crowd of children’s animation veterans now exploring indie projects (because what else are they gonna do). What he’s cooked up is something he says he could never make happen in the traditional commercially-backed market…
Clara And The Below is basically a retelling of The Nutcracker, only everything about it is dark and Gothic. Clara lives in the 1800s in an opulent mansion and adores her father, a grizzled muscular ex-military commander. When Pop falls gravely ill, Clara would do anything to see him escape death…even make a deal with the dark wizard Drosselmeyer.
Drosselmeyer sends Clara to the Below, the realm of angry spirits, where her instructions are to find and slay multiple disfigured monsters howling around the area. If she collects enough of their essences, Drosselmeyer says he’ll be able to synthesize a cure. But Clara soon realizes these are no random spirits — they’re the ghosts of people her father killed in battle. Pop is not the nice guy she thought he was…and what does this mean about Drosselmeyer’s real motive?
The closest thing the quartet of shorts have to humor is the Nutcracker himself, a boingy bug-eyed thing that you just know carries the voice of Alex Hirsch (and indeed he does). That voice will be limited to grunts and yells, however, because another reason Clara And The Below is so “uncommercial” is that it will tell its story almost entirely without dialogue.
The story is planned to be 25 minutes long and told in four parts. The shorts will be around six minutes each and continue the story from a different perspective. The Kickstarter’s initial goal was just to fund the first episode, but Braly will have no problem financing the other three…the second short, which follows the Rat King, is already covered. This campaign is projected to earn way over what is needed.
The campaign for Clara And The Below is currently running on the Kickstarter website and has earned over $250,000 at press time with 25 days remaining. Rewards include a digital 4K copy of the cartoon, art prints, postcards, stickers and the soundtrack on vinyl.
