We're building a serialized sci-fi story told in short, self-contained episodes — and this is Episode 1.

The premise: Earth has run out of energy. Its grid is failing, its cities have gone dark, and the last crews are sent out into deep space to find a new source before the planet stops working entirely. Elias Astro is the only member of his crew who survives the journey. What he discovers out there is that Earth isn't the only world running out of time — and that the people he was trained to point a weapon at may be the only ones who can help him.

The series is about that idea: two dying civilizations, the same problem, and what happens when survival stops being something you can do alone. Each episode pushes Elias toward a decision that costs him something. Episode 1 ends on the first one.

Why we built it this way: we wanted to find out whether a story could hold real emotional weight in under two minutes per episode — not a trailer, not a montage, but an actual chapter with a beginning, a turn, and an ending that makes you need the next one. Short-form usually trades depth for speed. We wanted to keep both.

Episodic also changes what you can build. A world gets room to expand, characters get room to earn their choices, and every episode can end on a question instead of an answer. Elias, the alien, the ships, the worlds, the dialogue, and the sound design are all built end-to-end in Cantina, so the series can stay consistent as it grows.

Nice work!

what are your autumn goals? this little animation isn't very seasonal but i really enjoyed making it in Photoshop (I'll put a process video in the comments). i'm a month away from travelling the world, and focussing on fun, peaceful projects this season! i'm naturally a workaholic, so any tips for detaching whilst travelling would be very much appreciated. i also want to see something fun you've been working on recently! 🌸 inspo: https://x.com/peakstarwave/status/2101866417326813409 the backgrounds are cutout from a CMYK print test sheet, and the flower video is from envato.

made in Photoshop with lots of cutting out and lovely paper textures: