2026, a 24-second loop

AI and 3D motion study: Pixel
rain

A study in art direction: what a designer brings when the tools change.

The making of.
The idea
Motion study
2026

A new tool is worth exploring before a client ever needs it.

Pixel rain is a short 3D animation made entirely in Blender: modelled, lit, animated and rendered there, from the first cube to the final frame. A block of small cubes wears away and rebuilds itself, over and over, without a seam. We made it to find out how far AI could take a team of designers into motion, and how fast.

Further than we expected, and faster. Ideas that once needed a week could be tried in an afternoon, so we could afford to try more of them and to be harder on the ones we kept. We stay open to every tool that widens what is possible, because our clients get everything we have.

Rows of scarlet cubes with rounded edges, close enough to count, a few breaking away into the light
Grey cubes running into a band of deep blue and black, seen low and close along the face of the block
Art direction
The human
part

Every decision that mattered was made by a designer.

AI could give us a hundred versions. It could not tell us which one was right. What the block should feel like, how slowly it should move, where the light should fall, which colours belonged and when a shot had run too long: each of those was a judgement, made by a designer and made again until it held.

That is art direction: setting the intent, reading what comes back and knowing what to keep. Taste is human. It is built over years of looking, making and getting things wrong, and no tool can hand it over.

The block in grey clay on a soft grey ground, its surface already eroded into waves of tiny cubes
The block from below, a black edge giving way to grey and pale scarlet cubes, dark rods crossing in front
Grey cubes in rows between a black and blue shadow and a thin scarlet edge
Seen from above, a white grid of cubes thinning out where the erosion reaches it
What we
found

AI broadens what a designer can do. It does not decide what is good.

Given a loose brief, the same tool returns motion that is busy and easy to forget. Given a designer with clear principles and a trained eye, it returns work we would put in front of a client.

So the choice is not between the designer and the tool. Keep the principles, keep the taste, and take every tool that carries them further. Designers directed. AI helped us get there faster.

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