Julien Neaves, Caribbean Head Writer
How do you tell a complete story in a little over three minutes? You pour in a lot of creativity and talent, that’s how! And that is definitely the case with the impressive animated short Make A Living.
Created by the Trinidadian husband-and-wife team of Kevin Licorish and Jeanelle Frontin of Createch Labs it tells the story of Maddie, a shy young woman who visits the fantastical “Make a Living” store with the slogan “Build Your Best Self”. And the store means that quite literally.
I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The animation is bright, vibrant and effectively uses lighting to create a dream-like quality. Maddie is a sweet, likeable character brought to life with some solid voice work. The concept of crafting your life like shopping in a grocery store is a clever and innovative one.
What truly makes Make A Living standout is the message of what we give up for a “better life” and what is truly important in life. This is message that is particularly important in an age of artificial lives via social media. There is a lot to unpack here from this light, sweet and satirical package.
Make A Living was entered into the fourth edition of the global short film competition hosted by Runway AI called Gen48 challenge where teams compete with videos between 1-4 minutes long. Licorish in a Facebook post reported that more than 3,000 teams entered and the Createch Labs film was one of only 50 finalists. Voting for the People’s Choice Award closes Wednesday May 7th, 2025 at 9 a.m. ET so if you are reading this before then definitely check out Make A Living by clicking here. and give this fantastic film a vote. It has already received mine.
Editor Jules’ Score: 8.5 out of 10
And you can check out more Caribbean animated reviews from Robot Mango Reviews below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “13 flavours of awesome sauce”.