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CDCUL

An animated film about shared spaces, told through crowded homes, a misunderstanding and rooms that become characters.

Client
ZAG - Zavod za gradbeništvo Slovenije
Year
2026
Wheels’ role
Motion design · Animation · Timing · Format adaptation

01 / The brief

Sharing space. Not the bathroom.

CDCUL’s brief connected crowded homes, unused rooms and isolation. The film needed to show shared space as something added to neighbourhood life, not something taken from the home. Monika Klobčar developed the illustrations and storyboard; Wheels handled motion design, animation, timing and format adaptation.

02 / The story, scene by scene

The story in six scenes.

  1. A small family home is squeezed between neighbouring buildings beneath a brown cloud.
    01

    Pressure at home

    A family gets a home. More buildings gather around it until the house becomes a cramped box under a cloud of construction.

  2. A person sits alone in a large, sparsely furnished room.
    02

    The opposite problem

    The camera pulls back from a person holding the tiny house. A large room opens up around a solitary figure.

  3. Two pairs of feet appear beneath a shower curtain in a comic storyboard scene.
    03

    A useful misunderstanding

    A second pair of feet appears behind the shower curtain. The film quickly rules out sharing bedrooms and bathrooms.

  4. Several unused interiors float separately, with a bicycle, a window and discarded furniture.
    04

    Look beyond the home

    Unused interiors enter as separate floating rectangles. A window, a bicycle and neglected furniture make the empty spaces recognisable.

  5. Illustrated hands clean a lamp and add furniture to a room being transformed.
    05

    Change the room

    Hands stretch the room, clean a lamp and add furniture. The empty outline becomes a place people could actually use.

  6. A shared room is attached to the base of a residential building, with people entering from above.
    06

    Reconnect the neighbourhood

    The shared room joins the base of the building. Residents leave their separate flats and come into the new space.

03 / From interior to character

A room with hands and feet.

In storyboard v01, the reading room is a long interior. By v03, it is a compact, freestanding box with hands and feet. That change gives the space a silhouette and a way to react. Buildings and furniture can take part in the story alongside the people.

Storyboard v01 shows a reading room as a long, open interior with people and tables.
Storyboard v03 redraws the reading room as a compact box with arms and feet.
Storyboard v01 (left) and v03 (right). Original drawings by Monika Klobčar, cropped from the source boards; the coloured card backgrounds are an editorial treatment for this case study.

04 / Visual development

One scene, three palettes.

The illustration studies explored white, beige, violet and more colourful treatments. These three extracts keep the house composition consistent, making it possible to compare the background, line contrast and balance of colour without changing the story.

Beige study

An illustrated family home on the beige background from the original style study.

Violet study

The same house composition with a violet sky fading into a light background.

Colour study

The house in the more colourful style study, with a warm background and violet clouds.
Three crops from the original illustration style studies. Authored colours and scene proportions are preserved; document headers and page margins are not part of the presentation.

05 / From storyboard to motion

The room takes shape.

The animatic tests the room being stretched, furnished and connected to the building. Each hand action and reveal needs time to read. Wheels developed the timing and animation of these changes for the finished film.

An empty illustrated room with a face, arms, legs, a window, a hanging lamp and a staircase.
A timing sketch beside the finished room frame.
Two illustrated people sit at a kitchen table beneath a ceiling lamp, surrounded by objects with faces.
Three cutaway interiors show a character at a table, a bicycle beside a sofa and large eyes looking out from an upper window.
Illustrated people cluster inside a small house carried through clouds by bird-like figures.
The finished illustrated world: a domestic conversation, unused interiors and the small home under pressure.

06 / Delivery

Two films, two ways to take part.

Delivery comprised two films, with clean 16:9, 4:5 and 9:16 versions and English and Slovenian subtitled 16:9 masters. The scripts give the story two calls to action: join the mission, or help identify spaces that could be shared.

Project credits

Client / commissioning partner
ZAG - Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute
Project
Consumer Demand for Circular Urban Living (CDCUL)
Wheels Studio
Motion design, animation, timing and format adaptation
Illustration, visual development and storyboard
Monika Klobčar
Languages
Slovenian and English
Delivery
Two films · 16:9, 4:5 and 9:16
Development period
2025-2026