Award-Winning Animated Short Film & Fantasy Concept, Grand Prize Winner - Windscribe Film Festival
Wabi-Sabi is a 60-second fantasy anime concept exploring beauty in imperfection, decay, and restoration. The short follows a shrine guardian attempting to mend a shattered kintsugi relic before a dark, color-draining entity attempts to destroy the sacred grounds.
Designed to bridge physical fine art with digital motion, the production marries traditional frame-by-frame character animation with real-time fluid simulations and digital watercolor backgrounds.
TECHNICAL BREAKDOWN
Software Toolset
Rebelle 8 — Digital Watercolor & Impasto Backgrounds
Toon Boom Harmony — Frame-by-Frame 2D Character Animation
JangaFX (EmberGen / LiquiGen) — Real-time Smoke, Fire, & Water Simulations
Adobe After Effects — Compositing, Volumetric Lighting, & Color Grading
Concept & Storyboarding
The narrative arc was constructed around the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi—embracing the flawed and broken. Pre-production focused on establishing dynamic character keyframes, action pacing, and emotional beats within a strict 60-second runtime.
BACKGROUNDS & ENVIRONMENT ART
Software Focus: Rebelle 8
Environment backgrounds were created using Rebelle 8, leveraging its physical fluid-dynamics engine to simulate organic watercolor bleeding, paper grain sedimentation, and thick impasto oil textures. Rather than static backdrops, these hand-painted canvases act as living, breathing elements within the composite.
Rebelle 8 Background Timelapse Video
2D FRAME-BY-FRAME ANIMATION
Software Focus: Toon Boom Harmony & Adobe After Effects
Character performance and action sequences in Wabi-Sabi were animated using traditional frame-by-frame techniques in Toon Boom Harmony.
Organic Water color textures created in Rebelle were overlayed on top of the characters in Adobe After Effects to mimic a watercolor boiling effect and to match the organic texture of the hand-painted environments.
VISUAL EFFECTS & SIMULATIONS
Software Focus: Janga FX’s Elemental Suite
To ground the ethereal elements, dynamic elemental effects—including the fiery breath of the Blight and the flowing water splashes—were generated using JangaFX tools (EmberGen and LiquiGen). These real-time voxel streams were integrated into Cinema 4D and textured with painterly overlays in After Effects to maintain the film's fine-art aesthetic.
CONTEST & CREDITS
Competition: Windscribe Animated Production Fest
Award: Grand Prize Winner (Human Division)
Credits:
Director, Animator & Compositor: Kelvin Ntukula
Software: Toon Boom Harmony, Rebelle 8, Cinema 4D, EmberGen, LiquiGen, Adobe After Effects
