jel labs.Skell
A three-act short in which a kids' tabletop game becomes a dark fantasy film. The studio's own development: story, world, characters and visual pipeline.
- acts
- 3
- scenes in the shotlist
- 20
- worlds: the game and the living room
- 2
the task
Test whether AI film can hold photoreal imagery and two worlds at once: the grim fantasy of a tabletop game and the warm family scene in the living room where kids are running that game.
what we did
- A story in three acts: Gates of Power, The Fluffy Dragon, The Mysterious Hero
- A party of heroes with locked looks: an orc barbarian, a gnome cleric, a wizard and a ranger
- Two visual modes: dark cinema for the game world and warm family drama for the living room
- A full scene-by-scene shotlist and key frames that stitch reality and the game together — the giant “dragon” turns out to be the family cat
process & making-of
- 01
Style bible
Photorealism instead of cartoon 3D: rules for light, lenses and colour for each of the two worlds.
- 02
Character sheets
Three-panel hero sheets — front, back and portrait — so faces and costumes hold from shot to shot.
- 03
Anchored shotlist
Every scene starts from an anchor frame; the rest are built from it in two passes.
- 04
Review and fixes
Contact sheets on every version and director review rounds by shot number.
technology
- Nano Banana Pro · Vertex AI
- style bible
- character lock
- shotlist pipeline
Frames were generated in Nano Banana Pro via Vertex AI on the studio pipeline: scene anchor, dependent shots, contact sheets and a review spreadsheet. Video prompts for animation are prepared.
team & JEL's role
JEL Labs' own development: story, world, characters and the whole visual pipeline were made in-house. The project became the proving ground for the method we use in client AI production.
results & feedback
The project stopped at the frames stage; no video was made. It gave the studio a proven pipeline for photoreal AI film with consistent characters — the same approach went into Made for You.
stills
next case
Made for You →