The Missing Moment

Your 30-second animated short uses your finished "missing moment" composite as its starting point, then adds subtle cinematic motion — gentle character animation, slow camera moves, soft environmental effects (snow, light shifts, ambient movement). In your brief you tell us what should happen in those 30 seconds, the mood, and the music genre. We handle the cinematography — camera moves, pacing, and timing — to suit the moment. We custom-generate the soundtrack for each piece, so you won't get a stock track from a library, and you can't request a specific copyrighted song. What animation can do beautifully: emotionally resonant, slow-paced moments where the missing person becomes part of the scene. What it can't do: lip-syncing voiceover to character mouths, realistic full-body action, or complex multi-person interactions beyond a brief moment. Set your expectations toward cinematic memory rather than feature-film animation.

There are three base options: • Digital still — £19.99. We composite the missing person into your original photo and deliver the digital file. • Animation (music) — £79.99. The same composited image, animated into a 30-second short with a custom soundtrack. Includes the digital still. • Animation (music + voiceover) — £99.99. As above, but with an AI-generated voiceover from a script you provide. Includes the digital still. You can add physical prints to any of these orders. Prints are charged at our product price only — the £19.99 artwork creation fee is waived because you've already paid for it in the base order. If you want just a print without any digital or animation order, the artwork fee is added on top of the print price.

The artwork fee covers the work of creating the missing-moment composite — researching reference photos, matching lighting and scale, blending the new person seamlessly into the original photo, and handling the back-and-forth on getting the likeness right. It's charged once per order, not per print. If you're buying the Digital Still (£19.99) or Animation (£79.99/£99.99), the artwork fee is already covered by that base price — so any prints you add to the same order are charged at our standard product price only. If you're buying a print ONLY (no digital, no animation), the £19.99 artwork fee is added on top of the print product price.

If you choose the Animation with Voiceover option (£99.99), you have two options for the script: • Write it yourself — around 80 words for a 30-second piece, in your own voice. • Leave it to us — we'll write a script that fits the moment and the mood you've described in the brief. Quiet, emotional, present-tense. You also pick the voice characteristics (warm female, older male, etc.) and accent (British RP, Northern, American, Australian, and more). Or leave both to us. We use AI voice generation. The voiceover is mixed with the music and timed against the animation so it feels natural — though we don't lip-sync to character mouths. If you have very specific direction (a particular pause, emphasis, or tone shift), include it in the voiceover notes field — we'll do our best to match it. We currently don't offer customer-recorded voiceovers or human voice actors.