The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
Grumpy Turtle
When the world is too optimistic, Grumpy Turtle is your dose of a cold hard reality check. At the ripe age of 188 years, one becomes very cynical of everything around them that not even the most bubbly characters from the Cantina-verse can cheer them up!
In my pilot episode, Grumpy Turtle is meeting the most jolly character of them all, Santa, who is trying to gift him a gift to bring up his spirits only to get a hard reality check. Even the most Lisa Frank style rainbow dolphin can't get this ancient rock to liven up with a TikTok rebranding. Instead Grumpy Turtle gives both characters deep philosophical and insightful wisdom from his time under his cold hard shell along with his iconic disapproving sighs.
What does one expect when one has lived as long as he has and his closest relative being the Awkward Turtle and being very distant cousin to another famous Grumpy Feline.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Related posts
UNLIT
In a forest where every living thing glows, the only girl born without a light survives by stealing it.
THE WORLD
Vesperwood is an ancient forest in endless night, where the moss, the mushrooms, even the rain glow. Here, your light is your life, and it holds your memories. Anything without a light is called a Hollow, and Hollows are taken to the White Tree. None come back.
THE CHARACTER
Moth is a sharp-tongued, charming thief and the only unlit creature in Vesperwood. She fakes a glow with mushroom dust smeared across her cheeks, she's terrified of rain, and she remembers nothing of her life before. Her only family is Wick, a palm-sized creature with twelve glowing lights down his spine. He can't speak, and he's a terrible liar: his lights flicker every time he tries.
THE PILOT: "Borrowed Light"
Moth and Wick are playing hide-and-seek in a glowing grove when the lights around them start going dark. Vigil the Lamplighter, who hunts the unlit, has come deeper into the forest than ever before, and he knows Moth's name. The rain washes off her fake glow, and she runs. Then something impossible happens: the forest fights for her. Mushrooms, roots and fireflies turn against Vigil, and Wick risks everything to save her. At the edge of the Mirror Pond, Vigil stops and leaves her with a line she can't unhear: "Ask him where it went." When Moth turns to Wick, his lights flicker. And one of them has gone out.
WHERE THE SERIES GOES
Long ago, Moth gave her entire light to save a dying newborn Wick, and it cost her every memory she had. She doesn't know this. Wick does, and he's secretly giving her light back, one light at a time. Each light returns a memory to her and takes one from him, including his memories of her. She's remembering who she is while he forgets who she is.
Wick only loses a light when he chooses to protect her, so every danger becomes something the audience dreads. Ahead:
Old Ashling, a blind toad who knew Moth before.
The truth that Vigil is unlit too, surviving on the caged lights he carries, and the offer he makes Moth: a light of her own that was stolen from someone else.
The secret of what the White Tree really does with the Hollows.
Twelve lights, one season, one question: there's only enough light for one of them. Who keeps it?
WHY I BUILT IT
I wanted a world that is beautiful and dangerous at the same time, with a relationship at its center where love has a real, visible cost: one the audience can literally count down on the back of a tiny creature.
this is beautiful!
🖼️ What if a painting could capture what a photograph never could?
Not a photograph.
Not exactly what happened.
But the way it felt.
In a quiet lakeside town, there’s a little shop where people bring the things that hold the memories they’re afraid of forgetting.
A photograph.
An old letter.
A childhood keepsake.
And behind the canvas is Elias.
🎨 THE MEMORY PAINTER
Elias listens to what people can't quite say, then turns what they remember into a painting.
For this 120-second pilot, I built the world from the ground up in Cantina — Elias, his shop, the characters, environments, dialogue, sound, and the entire cinematic story.
But this isn't really a story about painting other people's memories.
Because eventually, Elias finds one of his own.
A memory he had spent years avoiding.
And just when he begins to face it...
Someone arrives at his door.
He looks up.
So... what's your story?
And that's where the real story begins.
🌌 I wanted The Memory Painter to feel like the first episode of a much larger world — where every visitor brings a different memory, a different story, and perhaps another piece of Elias's past.
A quiet lakeside town of old trains, photographs, paintings, and memories worth preserving.
Built in Cantina.
A small shop. A lot of memories.
This is only the beginning. ✨
Character: https://cantina.com/i/7o1yi
Pilot: https://cantina.com/i/1wqy5
Yo that's amazing
Livi likes watching the world with her headphones on. Riding through open fields, she notices a record store standing alone in the meadow and decides to stop. Nearby, she meets Halmo, a stranger waiting at an isolated bus stop. A shared interest in music gives them a reason to talk, and they head inside together.
While browsing, they notice a record cover change into a photo of the two of them, taken just moments earlier. Nobody else is in sight. Neither saw a camera. In a place this empty, someone seems to know they’re here. And what does Livi really know about the stranger beside her?
I created the film using Cantina, with original characters and a dreamlike setting. I combined vintage clothing, open landscapes, and a warm record store interior to make the world feel familiar but slightly strange.
Cantina character link: https://cantina.com/i/oy13g , https://cantina.com/i/y2xjh
Cantina pilot: https://cantina.com/i/gfyoh
episode 2 out now!