Guardians of the Burrow
Director
🏆 Winner: Documentary Award — Short Form at OMNI International AI Film Festival — “Hyperphantasia” 2026.
This started as a fun side project made with love for my son. It just happens to have found a bigger audience too.
Winner: Best Documentary Short, OMNI International AI Film Festival 2026.
My boy is 4 years old and obsessed with wildlife documentaries. He told me about a real life partnership between an Amazonian tarantula (Xenesthis immanis) and a tiny dotted humming frog (Chiasmocleis ventrimaculata) who share a burrow in the Amazon and protect each other.
I was instantly intrigued. So I went looking for the truth behind the story and made him this: Guardians of the Burrow.
I built this in Kling 3.0 4K, holding myself to real wildlife documentary rules. Locked compositions, patient camera work, macro detail held in real focus.
The process involved researching the topic, writing the script and generating the voiceover with AI, then creating over 700 images. The best of those were hand edited in Photoshop, fixing scale, markings and checking against published photography of both species to try to keep it as true to the science as I could. From the top images I created 70 animated videos, selected the best ones, then edited and colour graded the final film.
I'm a filmmaker, not a biologist, and this film isn't flawless. A few AI glitches made it through, that's the honest reality of these tools right now. The storytelling is the part I poured myself into, and that part I stand behind.
I work professionally in motion design, animation and VFX, and that background is what led me to AI. Not as a replacement for craft, but as another tool to expand what stories I can tell.
Most importantly, my four-year-old client? Well, he approves the final cut & watches it on repeat :)
Thanks for watching!
#KlingAI4KContest #AIFilmmaking #AIVideo #AIShortFilm #GenerativeAI #AIArt #TextToVideo #AICreators #AIFilm #OMNI #AIIFF #OMNIFilmFestival #Guardiansoftheburrow #Xenesthisimmanis #Chiasmocleisventrimaculata
Source: Official video on YouTube
Genres
