Russian creators make Soyuzmultfilm AI animation shortlist in five days

A Russian creative duo landed on the shortlist of Soyuzmultfilm's 'Nu, AI Pogodi!' competition with a chase sequence they built in five days while juggling commercial work. Andrey Pinaev and Ekaterina Pinaeva submitted the film to the Soviet-era studio's contest exploring AI tools in animation.

Pinaev handled concept and voice; Pinaeva handled storyboards, animation, and editing. The pair chose music first—an unusual move—then built scene pacing and montage around the track. Pinaev recorded the voiceover live, aiming for Anatoly Papanov's cadence from the robot-hare episode of the original 1980s series; the line "Mama" is a direct callback. They skipped sound effects, reasoning that the music already carried rhythm and tension.

For storyboards and key frames, they used Nano Banana Pro on a student annual plan through Flow. Animation ran on Kling 2.5 inside Freepik's unlimited tier at €36/month, chosen for cost over speed. One sliding-asphalt shot required Seedance 2.0 via SJinn ($50/month, five iterations). The wolf character drifted toward a Pixar aesthetic mid-project when Nano Banana Pro began steering prompts in that direction; the team caught it late, leaving some frames visually inconsistent. Topaz handled upscaling; CapCut handled the final edit. Music came from Suno via a Syntx subscription.

The competition did not specify how many entries advanced to the shortlist or when finalists will be named.