Series Title: Modern Mouse

Episode 1: I dropped my AirPods.

ModernMouse follows Mouse’s adventures through life. Distracted by his phone, he trips over a suspicious rock and drops his phone and AirPods. Disconnected from digital stimulation, he begins to notice the world around him. The world is the same, but the way he sees it begins to change.

Pilot Plot: Mouse is walking along a white path toward his next job, which he believes is the best next step for his career. He should feel excited, but he feels tired and distracted. He isn’t sure why. As he walks, a blue bird grabs his sunglasses and flies away with them. He gets annoyed but keeps walking while scrolling. Mouse is always watching something, mostly content he never chooses. As he continues walking, bees start buzzing around his ears. Growing more annoyed, he turns up the volume to drown out the sounds of the outside world. Then an alarm goes off on his phone. It’s 12:00 p.m, and he’s running late. He starts rushing, he can’t afford to be late. He trips over a loose rock and falls flat on his back. When he wakes up, his AirPods are off and his phone is lying in the distance. He looks up at a beautiful sky. He watches the clouds move, notices the nature around him and takes in its sounds. He sees something beautiful and remembers the natural beauty that surrounds him. As Mouse his journey, unexpected friendships, unfamiliar places, and things that aren’t quite what they seem await him. But now that his sunglasses are gone, will he really pay attention to the world around him? Or will he put his sunglasses and AirPods back on? His journey will be full of distractions and shadows, but also lessons and light.

Personal thoughts: This was such a fun challenge to do. It really brought me back to my love for stories, characters and ideas. I’ve always loved movies and motion and being able to create a story with your own characters is super amazing. Also, since there’s so much content nowadays and some of it isn’t that great for us to be watching constantly, it’s nice to be able to put a nice story in between all the other videos. I went a step further because I felt inspired and already started developing the other cast members. I made them into posters just for fun. I got a little bit carried away, haha. I’ve also already put in some Easter eggs, and I personally like developing characters with some symbolism behind what they represent. Some might be a little bit obvious and some might not. I don’t want to give too much away, haha, the viewer also has to pay attention.

Character Link: https://cantina.com/i/in5fy

Pilot link: https://cantina.com/i/mt7ag

Feedback on Cantina: I think Cantina generates videos really well. I was really impressed! Since my idea was more of a cinematic pilot episode, I encountered a few issues. The episode doesn’t have any dialogue, just sounds and movement, so the transitions between clips needed to be smooth and sometimes the cuts between scenes felt too abrupt. Also, since my character has a unique tail, its shape sometimes wasn’t consistent or looked a little bit different from the previous clip. I also had some issues with the placement of the AirPods in his ears, sometimes they were outside his ears or positioned in a strange way. One feature I would have personally liked is the option to add transition effects between clips but I think that’s more related to the type of episode I made. It would also be great to save clips from previous videos and add them to the current one. Because sometimes, after trying a few different prompts, I generated some really cool clips, but when I tried the same description again the result wasn’t really the same. It would also be nice to have a built-in editor to adjust brightness and exposure, apply color filters, etc. Overall, I loved testing and playing with Cantina. I’ll definitely keep using it, I’m happy that I found a new personal side project.

I confirm that this is my own work and that I created my characters and video in Cantina.