Shimmering City
A LOOK BACK · 2023—2024
Before the city
came to life.
Some worlds begin with a place. Shimmering City began with questions about the lives inside it.
Conceived in 2023, Shimmering City grew through concept art, scenes, and visual experiments. The early video studies featured here were produced in late 2023 and early 2024.
With the first episode about to be released, we’re opening that archive again to see how much was already taking shape. All that preimagining—picturing the world before production—and all that pre-planning gave the episode a stronger foundation. The early work helped turn separate images into a more coherent story.
THE EARLY STUDIES / 2023—2024
A mind. A touch.
A question of humanity.
Two early films explore the lives inside Shimmering City: the presence of a thinking mind, and the meaning of a human connection.
01 / A QUESTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Reimagining the Mind
Reimagining what it means to think and be alive.
A familiar journey. An unfamiliar mind.CONCEPT STUDY 01
A life we cannot read.
The train is familiar. The passenger asks us to look again. This early study makes room for the question beneath the machinery: what does it mean to recognize a thinking, living presence?
02 / A QUESTION OF CONNECTION
What Remains of Us
What does touch mean?
An open hand. A human response.CONCEPT STUDY 02
follow the same code?
An offered hand becomes a point of connection between human and machine. The animation leaves space around that simple gesture, inviting us to consider what we bring to it—and what we feel in return.
FROM AN IDEA TO AN EPISODE
Looking back.
Moving forward.
CONCEPT ART 01A world conceived
Concept art let us imagine the city before committing its world to an episode: its atmosphere, its visual language, and the questions at the heart of it.
CONCEPT ART 02Ideas in motion
The video studies put those ideas in motion. A passing train, a look, an offered hand: each study gave us something concrete to reflect on as we planned the episode.
CONCEPT ART 03The first episode approaches
The first episode carries that groundwork forward, with clearer intent, a more consistent world, and a stronger connection between its scenes.
THE WORK BEFORE THE WORK
Imagined early.
Built with purpose.
Preimagining gave Shimmering City room to grow before the demands of an episode took over. These early studies let us spend time with the world: how it moved, how light shaped it, and how a small gesture could carry an emotional question. They helped us understand what we wanted the audience to feel.
Finding the episode’s heart.
Concept art and moving-image experiments made the abstract tangible. Seeing a mind behind a mechanical face, or a connection in an offered hand, helped focus the story around the lives inside the city. The atmosphere began to serve the emotion of the scenes.
Giving the vision a foundation.
Working through scenes, effects, and production needs early helped the different parts of the episode belong together. That preparation gave us clearer choices to build on and a shared direction to return to throughout production.