WORKPRODUCT Appoints Tobin Kirk EP, Brand Partnerships
July 27, 2026
Inspired by their shared love of cyberpunk, Seoul CG artists JIT and Calars team up for an ambitious, render-heavy (and AI-free) blast of atmospheric sci-fi action with audio courtesy of Echoic.
JIT and Calars: We wanted to tell a short, visceral story about a cybernetic girl who loses her sanity after undergoing extreme cyberware surgery. She is hunted through a ruined city by a hostile robot, and rather than running she turns and fights back.
The film was created without any AI. Using Blender and Houdini as our main tools, the project was driven purely by our shared love of sci-fi action and hard-surface destruction.
“Using Blender and Houdini as our main tools, the project was driven purely by our shared love of sci-fi action and hard-surface destruction.”
The biggest challenge was the hero shot, where the girl fires on the robot. It was extremely FX-heavy and pushed our render times to the limit. To manage this, we split the pipeline: JIT built the effects in Houdini and passed them as Alembic and VDB caches to Blender where Calars continued look development and lighting.
The bullet-defense concept went through a lot of iterations. We solved it by building a shield system that reads the position of each incoming bullet and blocks it on contact. Balancing that level of simulation detail against manageable render times was the hardest technical problem we solved on this project.
Director/animator: JIT, Calars
Music/Sound Design: Echoic Audio
Thanks: sterin, owow.point
