Ashen
Animated Short Film by Ruby Bell
Ashen is an animated short film by Ruby Bell, now on its international festival run. Our team built the film’s environments in Unreal Engine from scratch.
The film has screened at four Oscar-qualifying festivals and was shortlisted for the Best Short Film nomination at the 2027 AACTA Awards.
Festival run: AmDocs 2026 (world premiere), Balinale 2026, LA Shorts International Film Festival 2026 (LA premiere), Bengaluru International Short Film Festival 2026, AACTA Awards 2027 shortlist.
There was no concept art and no single visual style to follow. We started from rough room dimensions and a small set of references drawn from different aesthetics, and shaped them into one consistent world.
Every environment, prop and texture was made in-house in Unreal Engine, Houdini and Blender, with no marketplace or library assets. Procedural tools and hand modeling were combined for full control over detail, and lighting and rendering ran in real time inside Unreal Engine, so the sets could be refined shot by shot.
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