Next Lab Generation Required Filmmakers To Use Quill And Magnific, Most Embraced VR But Ditched AI

Artificial intelligence has loomed large in most conversations about animation over the past several years, but at this year’s Next Lab Generation workshop in Madrid, it was obligatory.

Over eight weeks, the participating teams in the event’s pitching program were required to incorporate two technologies into their production processes: Meta’s VR animation software, Quill, and the AI image platform, Magnific. Working with mentors fluent in the technologies, they developed proof-of-concept material for projects ranging from shorts and series to a feature film and a video game.

During their pitches, each was required to say how many hours they invested in their project, and how many of those were spent using the two techs. Almost every team praised Quill as an intuitive way to sketch, animate, block scenes, and quickly prototype ideas in three-dimensional space, although there were complaints about its learning curve. Magnific received a far more mixed reception. Most participants found it useful for early concept development, lighting tests, or mood exploration, and said it was good at producing a single photorealistic image, but abandoned it as a production tool after encountering problems with consistency, control, aesthetic personality, and a credit system that became too costly for a process that required lots of iteration.

The six finalists were selected from more than 70 submissions and spent eight weeks developing their projects before pitching them in Madrid at an event backed by the Community of Madrid through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport and sponsored by the Madrid City Council. At the close of the event, the jury awarded top honors to The Message, a deeply personal Mexican-Spanish short about unresolved grief; Sad Mahan, a videogame intro inspired by the Canary Islands’ housing and tourism crisis; and Taras, an ambitious fantasy feature rooted in the folklore and landscapes of Mexico’s Michoacán region. The three winning teams received professional accreditation to Annecy’s Mifa market in 2027.

The sharpest assessment came from The Shower Club director Miguel Medrano Malo, who said the team felt they were “doing the boring part” by preparing artwork for the AI, while “the AI was doing the fun part” of image creation. It was a sentiment that echoed throughout many of the presentations.

Here’s our breakdown of this year’s six Next Lab pitches.

Don Quiosker-Man

Directors: Ariel Muñoz, Xin Ai, Anna Escudero, Ángel Sánchez
Country: Spain

One of the funniest presentations of the event also delivered one of its strongest emotional hooks. Leaning on the importance of family, Don Quiosker-Man reimagines Don Quixote as Kike, an aging kiosk owner whose grief and financial hardship lead him to believe he has become a superhero. His Sancho Panza becomes Sansa, his pragmatic granddaughter, who slowly comes to appreciate her grandfather’s imagination while helping him fight back against a corporation bent on wiping out their neighborhood.

“We like to think that if Miguel de Cervantes were born in our time, he wouldn’t be writing about knight-errants. He would be writing about superheroes,” the filmmakers said. The short distinguishes reality from Kike’s fantasy by combining CG animation with comic-book-inspired 2D sequences, creating a visual language that shifts with the character’s unreliable state of mind. The team also found Quill to be far more creatively rewarding than AI, ultimately keeping just two AI-rendered shots after abandoning a much more ambitious workflow.

Rewind

Directors: Lyda Fernández Umbría and María Martínez
Country: Spain

Rewind reconsiders some of history’s biggest mysteries through the eyes of two deeply incompetent alien scientists. Every episode of this preschool series sends Boss and Banano to a different point in human history, where their attempts to quietly observe events accidentally trigger milestones like the discovery of fire or the construction of the pyramids.

What begins as a historical comedy gradually reveals itself as a story about friendship between two complete opposites. As the creators put it, “Sometimes mistakes don’t end the story. Rather, they get it started.”

The team used the workshop to experiment with Quill-built VR dioramas set in locations including ancient Egypt, Mount Everest, and Atlantis. AI ultimately proved less successful, with the filmmakers concluding that while it excelled at generating individual images, maintaining consistency across an animated sequence remained a significant challenge.

Sad Mahan

Director: Ángel Arce (Sankalibrado)
Country: Spain

Inspired by growing up in Spain’s Canary Islands, Sad Mahan channels frustration over overtourism and the current housing crisis into a stylized videogame adventure. Its melancholy canary protagonist battles armored invaders representing the forces transforming the islands, rendered in a handcrafted paper-cutout aesthetic inspired by classic video games and stop-motion animation.

Arce admitted the metaphor wasn’t especially subtle. “It’s not subtle at all. It’s me,” he laughed after explaining that the hero’s fight against the villains mirrored his own feelings about the islands’ changing identity.

Unlike most participants, Arce embraced AI throughout the workshop, developing a pipeline that combined Quill animation, which he said was perfect for puppetry when used like a marionette, and AI-assisted rendering. Even so, he stressed that “you have to be in control every time. You can’t let AI control yourself.” The project was one of three selected by the jury for top honors.

Taras

Director: Juan Luis Hernández
Country: Mexico

The most ambitious world-building exercise of the showcase, Taras is a fantasy feature rooted in the landscapes, folklore, and history of Hernández’s own Michoacán. Set in a valley filled with volcanoes and an ancient citadel ruled by an immortal tyrant, the story follows Lucio, a blind boy caught in a brutal ritual before embarking on a journey that could rewrite the world’s mythology.

Hernández drew inspiration from indigenous traditions, the Paricutín volcano, and the historic Relación de Michoacán, creating a fantasy universe that feels deeply connected to Mexican culture.

Throughout the presentation, he returned to a question that drives the project: “Is fiction inspired by reality? Or maybe reality is starting to be inspired by fiction?” He praised Quill as the workshop’s biggest discovery, saying he had “completely fallen in love with Quill,” while using AI primarily as a finishing tool for lighting and atmosphere. Taras was one of this year’s three winning projects.

The Message

Director: Daniela Belmonte Valencia
Country: Mexico / Spain

Perhaps the most personal pitch of the event, The Message grew out of a story written by Belmonte’s mother (who made the trip to Madrid for the pitch) as she processed her own complicated relationship with her late father. The resulting short follows a young woman attending her estranged father’s funeral before being pulled into a surreal lucha libre-inspired world where she must confront unresolved grief.

Rather than exploring reconciliation, the short’s team is interested in a more difficult question: How do you mourn someone you never truly loved?

Belmonte explained that the story ultimately argues that “perhaps the only one that can give her the love and reassurance that she has always wanted can only be herself.”

The team produced its proof of concept almost entirely in Quill after deciding that AI couldn’t reproduce the intimate, handmade feeling they wanted. Instead, they kept AI confined to visual experiments and lighting references while completing the final teaser inside Quill. The film was another of the workshop’s three award winners.

The Shower Club

Director: Carmen Álvarez Muñoz, Miguel Medrano Malo
Country: Spain

Few pitches generated as many laughs as The Shower Club, a comedy that begins when a group of older women discovers that the men’s locker room at their local swimming pool has much better shower controls than their own. What starts as a complaint quickly snowballs into protests, media attention, and eventually a nationwide movement.

Beneath the absurd premise lies a surprisingly affectionate portrait of aging, activism, and friendship. “Usually older people are represented as one group, full of stereotypes,” Medrano Malo said. “We want to give them their own voices and their own humor.”

Visually, the project pairs hand-drawn 2D characters with glossy, porcelain-inspired 3D environments. Although the filmmakers used AI to develop and texture the backgrounds and Quill as much as needed, they quickly concluded that only hand-drawn 2D animation would work for their aesthetic. Just as important as the quality of the results, Medrano Malo offered perhaps the workshop’s most memorable line: “We felt like we were doing the boring part, and the AI was doing the fun part.” It’s safe to say that if this project moves forward, they won’t be prompting to get their resutls.