Project Description:

"Still Water" - an animated short film and original music about a boy who throws a stone at his own smiling reflection, then sinks willingly into the water to chase the version of himself he wishes he could be. The twist: the "lake" was his tears on a kitchen table the whole time.

Process Steps:

Concept & Music First. I started by asking: What kind of animated film do I wish existed? I landed on self-acceptance, something that feels like Song of the Sea meets a music video. I wrote the song concept first, inspired by Aurora's "Runaway" and Ariana Grande's "Past Life," then generated the track on MELIUS to see if the vibe would land. It did.

Visual Style Development. I built the visual identity using GPT Image 2, generating character reference sheets and environment concepts.

Storyboard Generation. I mostly generated 8-panel storyboard shots in GPT Image 2, attaching the character and environment references to every generation for consistency. Each panel is a keyframe for the animation.

Animation with Seedance 2.0. I fed each storyboard panel into Seedance as a reference image, with detailed motion prompts describing body language, camera movement, ambient life, and lighting.

The workflow touched multiple node types: text generation for concept and lyrics, GPT Image 2 for storyboards and reference sheets, Seedance 2.0 for animation, and ElevenLabs for the original song.

Feedback on Melius:

The agent was genuinely useful for refining ideas I would sometimes describe a rough concept and it would help me structure it, catch inconsistencies, and suggest improvements. The multi-node workflow (text → image → video) made the pipeline feel connected rather than fragmented.

One thing I would love to see: A "Question Mode" toggle, where I can ask the agent something without it making changes to my project. Sometimes I just wanted advice or a second opinion, not an edit. A simple toggle between "Plan/Ask" and "Execute" would make the creative back-and-forth feel more natural.

Overall, it was fun. Building a complete animated short with original music in a few days, using Melius agent as a creative partner rather than a replacement, felt like a glimpse of where filmmaking is going.

PROJECT LINK