A short short animated film, Justin Kleiner’s The Cloud Forest is a 2-minute journey into a fantasy world where robots and mystic creatures exist in harmony.
Kleiner uses soft pastel colours to create a wholesome, welcoming world. Sans dialogue, the story focuses on Nuno, a wooden robot answering the call of distressed creatures deep within the Cloud Forest. The plot is simple and snag-free for obvious reasons (it does feel overly simple) and it plays out accompanied by uptempo music. Although the animation is likeable (some of the imagery is particularly well done), the pacing and progression suffers due to unnecessary cuts. The music too, does not fit the story at certain points (when it does, it creates an otherworldly, fantasy-world effect), making the audio and visuals feel like they are running parallely, unrelated to each other.
Overall, The Cloud Forest’s music and animation make it a soothing ASMR work. For what’s more calming than a story with no villains?
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