Estudio

Animation studio

Short films that teach.

We make short animated films for children and the people who watch with them. Each one tells a single story and earns a single lesson, about learning, about playing fair, about getting up and trying again. People write, draw and decide. Our own software and our own machines do the heavy lifting.

Talk to us See how a film is made

Why we make these films

A good short film can stay with a child for years. We want ours to be worth that: calm enough to watch together, honest enough to talk about afterwards, and clear about the one thing it is trying to say.

Education

Every film is built around one lesson sentence, written before the first scene. The story has to earn it, and anything that does not serve it is cut.

Sports and sportsmanship

Sport is where children first meet winning, losing, teammates and rules. Our stories care less about the score and more about how the players treat each other.

Enlightenment

Curiosity, patience and understanding other people. We want a child to finish a film knowing a little more about the world and about themselves.

Feel-good stories

Warm, gentle and real. A character who loses is allowed to feel it, and the film ends with something worth smiling about, so a family can watch it together without worry.

Our first series: Mateo

Mateo is a boy who learns about soccer, and about people, one short film at a time. The series is in production. Estudio is built for many series and many sports, so Mateo is where we start and not where we stop.

One lesson per film

Each film is short and carries a single lesson sentence that the story earns. Nothing is added that does not serve it.

Spanish and English

Titles, voices and subtitles in both languages, so a family can watch in the language they speak at home.

Made for children

Calm pacing, honest feelings and no tricks. A child who loses a game is allowed to feel it, and to try again.

Many series, many sports

Characters, rules and sports live in data, not in code. A new series starts from its own series bible, with nothing to rebuild.

How a film gets made

Nine steps, in order. Software does the repetitive work at each one; a person reviews the result and decides when the film moves on.

  1. Idea
    Write the story as a short prompt and a one-sentence summary. A local writing model can offer three story ideas; a person chooses one, or none.
  2. Script
    The working screenplay, titles in Spanish and English, and the lesson sentence. Scenes can be loaded into the screenplay or built into a board from it.
  3. Storyboard
    Draft stills for each scene and a hand-drawn black-and-white storyboard, with notes and an approval on every panel. A whiteboard, doodle pad and design board sit beside it.
  4. Animate
    Approved stills are turned into short clips, using each scene's motion direction.
  5. Voice
    Every line of dialogue is reviewed, then voiced in Spanish or English.
  6. Music
    Describe the score in words, save candidate tracks, compare them and choose one.
  7. Edit
    Scenes, storyboard, review notes and saved versions, in one place.
  8. Finalize
    Build the rough cut, then the finished film with intro card, end card and subtitles, and check the outputs.
  9. YouTube or Export
    An explicit choice: upload privately, or save the finished film and its subtitle files to a chosen folder.

Nothing is animated until the storyboard is approved.

Every panel of the drawn storyboard is pending, approved or marked for changes, and only a person can approve it. The approval is recorded against a signature of the exact scene text and the drawing, so it applies to that revision and no other.

If the camera, the shot, the action, the cast, the dialogue or the length of a scene changes, its caption refreshes from the film file and that panel goes back to pending. Keyframes and final stills cannot start until every current panel is approved, and both the app and the production engine check this before any GPU work begins.

The drawings stay with people. Only the approved scene text is sent to the image model. It is slower than skipping the step, and it is why the finished film says what we meant it to say.

Our technology

Estudio is our own Mac application and production engine. AI models do the heavy drawing, animation, voice and music work on our own GPUs. People write the stories, approve every step that matters, and own every file.

Application

Platform
A native Mac application. No browser editor and no cloud service: the app and its data live on our own machines.
Data model
Plain files that a person can read. A series is one bible.json with its style, rules and characters. A film is one film.json with titles, lesson, scenes, cast, lines, music direction and approvals, plus a creative.json for the idea, screenplay and design notes.
Not tied to a series
Series names, sports and characters come from data. Nothing in the code knows about Mateo or about soccer.
Stage line
A line under each film title shows where it stands, and a Studio page lists what is missing or out of date at every stage.

Scene to image

One prompt per scene
The scene fields still, camera, faces, head_count and cast are combined with the series style, the series rules and each character's description into a single text prompt.
References
A small fixed number of character reference images is attached to each scene, so characters stay recognisable from shot to shot.
Drafts and finals
Draft stills use a faster setting for quick review. Final stills are made at full quality only after the storyboard is approved.
Motion
The motion field is used only later, when an approved still is animated into a clip.
Automatic checks
Each still is checked for problems with faces, blank backgrounds, colours and small details such as glasses. The checks flag; a person still reviews every still.

Models and compute

Where it runs
On our own GPUs. The image model, the video model, the music model, the speech model and the story writer are separate local workers.
Leases
Every GPU call goes through a lease broker. A worker asks for a lease under its own app identity and priority, does its job, and releases the lease when it is done.
Visibility
Because every call carries an identity, we can always see which job is using which GPU and why. Nothing runs on the GPUs anonymously.
Open to change
Models are replaceable parts behind clear roles. We can change a model or add GPUs without changing how a film is made.

Finishing and delivery

Audio
Spanish and English voices, and one chosen music track per film.
Subtitles
Subtitle files in Spanish and English for every finished film.
Cards
An intro card at the start and an "El fin" card at the end.
Delivery
A private upload, or the finished video and its subtitle files saved to a folder we choose. Nothing is published without a person asking for it.

Safety of the work

Backup and restore
A whole film, including its film file, storyboard, notes and creative work, can be backed up and restored in one step.
Version history
A film can be saved as a numbered version with a note. Versions are never overwritten, files are recorded with checksums, and restoring an old version first saves the current state as a new one.
Undo
Deleting an item moves it to the Trash, and the delete can be undone.

From script to upload

Eight stages, each one waiting for the one before it.

  1. Script

    Screenplay, titles and lesson are written into the film file as structured scenes.

  2. Storyboard

    Drawn panels are reviewed; the gate passes only when every current panel is approved.

  3. Refs

    Character reference images are chosen and attached, a small fixed number per scene.

  4. Keyframes

    One prompt per scene produces draft stills, then final stills, each checked automatically and reviewed by a person.

  5. Clips

    Approved stills are animated into short clips using each scene's motion direction.

  6. Audio

    Voices in Spanish and English, the chosen music track, and subtitles in both languages.

  7. Final

    Clips, audio, intro and end cards are assembled into a rough cut and then the finished film.

  8. Upload

    A private upload or a file export, started only by a person.

What we hold to

People decide

AI does the heavy lifting. A person writes the lesson, approves the storyboard, reviews every still and chooses when a film is finished.

Local first

Stories, drawings and films are made and kept on our own machines and our own GPUs, not handed to a cloud service.

Honest storytelling

Real feelings, fair play and no tricks. We do not make a child feel bad to make a point, and we do not pretend losing does not hurt.

Portable by design

Everything a film is lives in plain files in one folder. It can be read, backed up, moved and restored without special tools.

Visible computing

Every GPU job is leased under a name and a priority, so we always know what our machines are doing.

Open to change

Models are roles, not commitments. When a better tool comes along, we can adopt it without changing the way we work.

How this website works

One page
This site is a single page on a single server at estudio.icu. It has no database and stores no visitor accounts.
Encrypted
Every page is served over TLS, with strict transport security and headers that stop the page being framed or misread by the browser.
Contact form
The form carries a signed timestamp, so a message must be sent from a real visit within a sensible time window, and a hidden field that people never see and automated senders tend to fill.
Rate limit
Each sender can send only a few messages per hour, which keeps the inbox for real people.
Your message
A valid message is checked for a name, an email address and a reasonable length, then delivered by email to a person who reads and answers it.
Secrets
Mail settings and signing keys are kept outside the web root, so they are never served, and every value printed on the page is escaped.

Say hello.

Teachers, coaches, parents and anyone who cares about good stories for children: tell us who you are and what you have in mind. A person reads every message and answers it.

hola@estudio.icu