Beeld Let’s Loose With GORT Sci-Fi Action Short Film

The last time we featured Rio de Janeiro design and animation studio Beeld was for this macro nature doc exercise. But GORT, their newest in-house project, trades the microscope for a mech and plenty of sci-fi action.

Eduardo Tosto, ECD and co-director at Beeld: GORT started with something unusual: nothing. No client. No existing IP. No universe to inherit. Just a blank page and the freedom to build everything from scratch. The challenge was not simply to create a visually compelling world. It was to make that world coherent.
 

“No client. No existing IP. No universe to inherit. Just a blank page and the freedom to build everything from scratch.”

 
Generative tools became part of the process from the earliest stages, but the creative direction, the rules and the decisions behind the world remained ours. Because building a world isn’t just about making it look real, it’s about deciding how it works and making every frame follow those decisions.

Production was a mix of tools and techniques. We generated characters, props, and background concepts, then edited and refined them by hand in Photoshop. The storyboard and animatic were created using traditional methods.

Some shots came from generations with prompts written with Claude. For others, we built a 3D previz in Blender that served as animation input for generating the final look in Seedance 2.0 via Higgsfield. Many shots then required extensive rotoscoping and compositing. No shot was rendered through a traditional pipeline. Editing and finishing were done in After Effects and Premiere.
 

Images

 
A person walks through a desolate, futuristic wasteland with large broken concrete structures and scattered debris under a vivid pink and orange sunset sky. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

A futuristic soldier with a gun faces a charging robot in a ruined, sci-fi landscape at sunset. The ground is cracked and debris flies from an explosion behind the robot. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

A bulky, armored robot with cannons for arms stands in a ruined, post-apocalyptic landscape at sunset, facing forward with a powerful, imposing stance. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

A futuristic soldier in a helmet and yellow scarf holds a glowing weapon, standing in a ruined, sci-fi cityscape with pink and purple lighting. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

A figure in a damaged helmet and yellow spacesuit peers through a jagged opening, facing a person in the foreground. The background is pink and hazy, creating a tense, futuristic atmosphere. Frame from Stash Magazine article.
 

Credits

 
Production: Beeld
Director: Eduardo Tosto, Papito Jones, Marcelo Mourão, Greco Bernardi

Toolkit:
Midjourney, Figma Weave (Nano Banana and GPT Image), Higgsfield (Seedance 2.0 and Kling), Photoshop, Blender, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Claude.