VFX artist Jacob Zirkle wrote, shot, and finished a visual-effects short film in 24 hours, using Spark to script and previsualize the entire thing in the browser before a single frame was shot.
The Project
Jacob gave himself 24 hours to make a finished short film, visual effects and all. The hook was a portal scene where his character shrinks to a tiny scale, an Ant-Man-style effect built on Gaussian splats, which he also used the project to learn. The constraint was brutal: script, shoot, animate, composite, edit, color, and sound, start to finish, in a day.
The Workflow
He started in Spark, Lightcraft’s browser-based production platform, working in an early preview build. In Spark he wrote the full script using building blocks that auto-format the screenplay and let him create shots directly in the script. Spark’s 3D workspace runs entirely in the browser and supports USD files and Gaussian splats, so Jacob uploaded a splat of his actual filming location, dropped in portal models, and blocked out the whole scene. Using shot creation he placed cameras and tested angles, and several of those Spark shots matched his final footage one to one. Spark’s larger idea is a single project where a whole crew prepares a film together: a DP placing cameras while a director blocks animation in real time, with printable shot lists for the shoot day.
From there it was a tight production run: a simple green-screen lighting setup, on-set HDRIs captured so the CGI could be lit to match in Blender, careful matching of light direction for the shrunken-character shots (mapped out in Spark first), keying and editing in DaVinci Resolve, a Rokoko motion-capture suit to animate the miniature, Blender renders, then sound and color in the final hours.
The Takeaway
Jacob made the deadline. The story is a proof point for Spark as a previsualization tool: by scripting and blocking in the browser first, he walked onto a green-screen set already knowing his angles and his lighting, which is what made a one-day VFX short possible at all.
