The story opens with a tree, the only greenery in a dismal urban environment pulled from its roots to make way for more city construction. As the tree falls, a seed is torn away and is carried by the wind through the hostile concrete jungle of the city until it tumbles into a dark crack in an alleyway. The seed’s survival in this unfriendly environment seems impossible until the moonlight shines through the darkness and clouds to inspire the seed.

Kibwe Tavares’ background is in live-action and VFX. To create the realism animation style of The Seed & The Moon, Tavares along with the production team used photo-real CG environments and VFX to create the rich and organic texture for which he is becoming known. This film employed a range of new techniques to recreate the realistic environments while retaining a sense of magic. By using lidar data and scans, the team was able to build props and recreate environments with scales ranging from individual stones in tarmac to entire city-wide shots, which were then textured in MARI.