The story
Child of Fire is set in a world where the strong destroy the weak. In doing so, they plant the seeds of their own downfall.
The people of Ur Khar live above one of the last deposits of Dragon Ore, a metal with strong and mystical powers. Their lives are so tied to the ore that it shows in how they look.
A scout spots an Aeti, a dragonlet that lives near the ore, and follows it into the hidden valley. That starts a chain of events that destroys a peaceful people and takes their ore. The same tragedy also leads to the rise of a hero who will one day bring down an empire.
How it was made
Child of Fire was made end to end in ShowMaker Studio, one shot at a time. Planning each angle means the AI has less to invent when it renders a shot. It also saves multishot renders for the places that need them, and lets cheaper models build much of the show.
The total cost was $64.31. Video renders were $42.48 (46 renders, 230 seconds). Stills were $18.13 (491 images, mostly reshoots). Voice, music and sound effects were $3.55 (106 clips).
Most of the video was Seedance: 17 Seedance 2.0 reference-to-video renders ($21.18) and 6 Seedance 2.5 reference-to-video ($13.29). There were also Seedance 2.0 image-to-video, Seedance 2.0 mini, Seedance 2.5 image-to-video and two Seedance 1.5 Pro renders. The final cut was upscaled to 4K with Topaz on the desktop.
A person had the final say. The tools broke the scenes down and rendered them, and a person decided what stayed.
What to take from it
Most of the stills budget went to reshoots. Fixing a frame before it's animated costs far less than re-rendering the video built on it.