Final Days
Written as an audio diary and realized as a cinematic science-fiction short exploring purpose, isolation, and life at the edge of meaning.
Released
Animation
Cinematic
Project Overview
Final Days is a CGI cinematic short film set aboard a crashed space pod on an unknown planet. It follows Commander Caspian, a man stranded in total isolation, continuing the routines of a mission that no longer exists, recording his thoughts into an audio log for whoever might one day find him. The film has no traditional narrative arc. It observes a man waking, sitting, working through the night as he tries to find meaning under the illusion of purpose.
Built in 3ds Max and Unreal Engine over the course of a month, Final Days began not as a film, but as a personal audio diary. What started as a written reflection on purpose, isolation, and the cost of relentless creation gradually evolved into the voice of Caspian, a solitary man drifting through the final days of a world that has already moved on without him.
The film was written, voiced, directed, and produced by me, with every creative decision emerging from that original recording. The pod, the endless ocean beyond the viewport, the projected messages scattered across the walls, and the routines that define Caspian’s existence were all designed to externalize an internal question: what happens when the pursuit of purpose becomes the very thing that separates us from living?
The Writing Came First
How a period of relentless creative work led to an unexpected reflection on purpose, isolation, and the experiences we sacrifice in pursuit of our ambitions.
Final Days did not begin with visuals, a story, or even a film. It began with a realization.
For more than a week, I had barely left my studio. My days had collapsed into a cycle of waking up, working, sleeping, and repeating. I was completely consumed by the project I was building, spending long hours in front of a screen without giving much thought to the world beyond it.
One night, it started raining. I remember looking out through the window and watching it fall outside. Nature was right there, only a few steps away. I could remember exactly how rain felt on my skin, yet I had no desire to leave my chair and experience it. That realization stayed with me. The rain wasn’t inaccessible. The outside world wasn’t locked away from me. Yet somehow, I felt confined within the space I had created for myself.
It raised a question that had been quietly lingering in my mind for a long time. We spend years chasing purpose, building careers, creating work, and pursuing ambitions. But what happens when that pursuit becomes so consuming that it disconnects us from the very experiences that make life meaningful? If everything were to end tomorrow, what would all that effort actually amount to? Would the work matter more than the moments we never stopped to experience?
I began writing these thoughts down. At first they were fragmented observations, personal reflections about purpose, creativity, obsession, and the invisible traps we build for ourselves. But the more I wrote, the more those thoughts began to take shape. Eventually they became a voice. Caspian’s voice.
That same night, I recorded the text as an audio diary, much like the personal voice notes I occasionally make to clear my head. When I played it back, something unexpected happened. Images immediately began forming in my mind. The interior of the pod. The ocean beyond the viewport. The screens. The solitude. The world of Final Days emerged from the recording itself. The film came afterward. The voice came first.
An Unexpected Reference Point
The film that helped me realize that science fiction could carry deeply personal and introspective stories.
While developing Final Days, the closest creative reference point was Duncan Jones’ Moon. Not because of its setting, visuals, or story, but because of the emotional territory it explored. Moon understood something about isolation that many science-fiction films often overlook. It is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is repetitive and almost invisible. A tiny shift that happens when a person spends enough time alone with their own thoughts.
That idea resonated deeply with me because Final Days was born from a similar place. The project emerged during a period when I had become consumed by work, spending days confined to my studio, disconnected from experiences that once felt important. Looking out at the world through a window began to feel strangely similar to Caspian looking out from his pod. The circumstances were different, but the emotions were familiar.
What I admired most about Moon was its willingness to sit with those emotions rather than constantly escape them. It trusted emptiness and reflection. It allowed its protagonist to exist inside his loneliness rather than perform it for the audience. That approach became an important influence while shaping Caspian’s character. He is not a man actively fighting isolation. He has already learned to live with it. He jokes with his machines, follows the same routines every day, and accepts a reality that has become normal to him. In many ways, Caspian became an extension of the questions that originally inspired the film, questions about purpose, obsession, ambition, and what remains when the things we spend our lives pursuing begin to lose their meaning.
This helped me understand that science fiction could carry that kind of emotional weight. Final Days became my attempt to explore those ideas through a voice that felt deeply personal while still existing within a larger speculative world.
Building Caspian's World
Designing, modeling, and assembling a fully digital environment that reflected the themes of isolation, routine, and quiet introspection at the heart of the film.
Unlike traditional productions that begin with a physical set or location, every environment in Final Days had to be imagined and built from the ground up. The pod, the surrounding ocean, the distant structures beyond the viewport, and the countless details that filled Caspian's living space were all developed specifically for the film.
The process combined custom modeling, kit-bashed assets, environmental design, and extensive scene assembly within Unreal Engine, with additional modeling work completed in 3ds Max where required. While existing assets helped accelerate parts of the production, the overall design language, layout, and visual identity of the world were created specifically to support the story and emotional themes of the film.
From the beginning, the objective was not to build a futuristic spaceship, but to create a space that felt lived in. The pod needed to function as both a home and a prison. A place of comfort, routine, and familiarity, while simultaneously reminding the audience of Caspian's separation from the world beyond the glass.
Every object, screen, piece of furniture, and structural element was considered through that lens. The environment became an extension of the character himself, reflecting the routines, habits, and emotional state of someone who had spent years alone. More than a backdrop, the pod became a silent participant in the story, helping communicate ideas that were often left unspoken in the narration.
Why We Create
A film that began as a question about purpose eventually became a reminder of why creating still matters.
Final Days started as a personal reflection. A collection of thoughts written during a moment when I found myself questioning the very thing I had spent most of my life pursuing. It began with uncertainty, with the feeling that the endless pursuit of purpose could sometimes become a prison of its own making.
What followed was unexpected. The act of creating the film became the answer to the questions that inspired it. Through writing, designing, building, and shaping the world of Final Days, I was reminded that meaning is rarely found at the finish line. More often, it exists within the process itself.
Caspian's journey may take place inside a solitary pod drifting across an endless ocean, but the emotions that shaped him came from a very real place. In many ways, the film became a conversation between who I was when I wrote that first audio log and who I had become by the time the final frame was complete.
Perhaps that is what Final Days is ultimately about. Not the search for purpose, but the realization that purpose is often something we create for ourselves, one day, one choice, and one story at a time.
From Studio to Montreal
Final Days selected for exhibition at one of the world's most respected digital art gatherings.
In August 2025, Final Days was selected for exhibition at RGBMTL Montreal, a nonprofit collective and annual event celebrating digital art on an international scale. Now in its fourth year, the exhibition featured works by 180 international artists, selected by 24 curators from around the world. Each year, RGBMTL invites 25 artists to select between 5 and 10 artists each, creating an extensive collective curation that highlights a wide range of practices from creators worldwide. Works are presented across varied installation formats, including wall projections, CRT monitors, and LED panels.
Being selected for RGBMTL meant Final Days was placed alongside established artists from across the globe, chosen not through an open submission process but through the considered recommendation of curators within the digital art community. For a film that began as a personal voice note recorded late at night after weeks of isolation inside a studio, eventually finding its way onto the walls of an international exhibition in Montreal was not something that had been planned for. It simply meant that it is something that happens when the work is honest enough to travel.
Credits
Written, Directed & Created By
M. Fahad Khan (FDK)
Narration & Voice Performance
M. Fahad Khan (FDK)
Production
FDK Studios
Created with
Unreal Engine & 3ds Max
Genre
Science Fiction Film
© 2026 FDK Studios. All rights reserved.
More Works
©2026
Final Days
Written as an audio diary and realized as a cinematic science-fiction short exploring purpose, isolation, and life at the edge of meaning.
Released
Animation
Cinematic
Project Overview
Final Days is a CGI cinematic short film set aboard a crashed space pod on an unknown planet. It follows Commander Caspian, a man stranded in total isolation, continuing the routines of a mission that no longer exists, recording his thoughts into an audio log for whoever might one day find him. The film has no traditional narrative arc. It observes a man waking, sitting, working through the night as he tries to find meaning under the illusion of purpose.
Built in 3ds Max and Unreal Engine over the course of a month, Final Days began not as a film, but as a personal audio diary. What started as a written reflection on purpose, isolation, and the cost of relentless creation gradually evolved into the voice of Caspian, a solitary man drifting through the final days of a world that has already moved on without him.
The film was written, voiced, directed, and produced by me, with every creative decision emerging from that original recording. The pod, the endless ocean beyond the viewport, the projected messages scattered across the walls, and the routines that define Caspian’s existence were all designed to externalize an internal question: what happens when the pursuit of purpose becomes the very thing that separates us from living?
The Writing Came First
How a period of relentless creative work led to an unexpected reflection on purpose, isolation, and the experiences we sacrifice in pursuit of our ambitions.
Final Days did not begin with visuals, a story, or even a film. It began with a realization.
For more than a week, I had barely left my studio. My days had collapsed into a cycle of waking up, working, sleeping, and repeating. I was completely consumed by the project I was building, spending long hours in front of a screen without giving much thought to the world beyond it.
One night, it started raining. I remember looking out through the window and watching it fall outside. Nature was right there, only a few steps away. I could remember exactly how rain felt on my skin, yet I had no desire to leave my chair and experience it. That realization stayed with me. The rain wasn’t inaccessible. The outside world wasn’t locked away from me. Yet somehow, I felt confined within the space I had created for myself.
It raised a question that had been quietly lingering in my mind for a long time. We spend years chasing purpose, building careers, creating work, and pursuing ambitions. But what happens when that pursuit becomes so consuming that it disconnects us from the very experiences that make life meaningful? If everything were to end tomorrow, what would all that effort actually amount to? Would the work matter more than the moments we never stopped to experience?
I began writing these thoughts down. At first they were fragmented observations, personal reflections about purpose, creativity, obsession, and the invisible traps we build for ourselves. But the more I wrote, the more those thoughts began to take shape. Eventually they became a voice. Caspian’s voice.
That same night, I recorded the text as an audio diary, much like the personal voice notes I occasionally make to clear my head. When I played it back, something unexpected happened. Images immediately began forming in my mind. The interior of the pod. The ocean beyond the viewport. The screens. The solitude. The world of Final Days emerged from the recording itself. The film came afterward. The voice came first.
An Unexpected Reference Point
The film that helped me realize that science fiction could carry deeply personal and introspective stories.
While developing Final Days, the closest creative reference point was Duncan Jones’ Moon. Not because of its setting, visuals, or story, but because of the emotional territory it explored. Moon understood something about isolation that many science-fiction films often overlook. It is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is repetitive and almost invisible. A tiny shift that happens when a person spends enough time alone with their own thoughts.
That idea resonated deeply with me because Final Days was born from a similar place. The project emerged during a period when I had become consumed by work, spending days confined to my studio, disconnected from experiences that once felt important. Looking out at the world through a window began to feel strangely similar to Caspian looking out from his pod. The circumstances were different, but the emotions were familiar.
What I admired most about Moon was its willingness to sit with those emotions rather than constantly escape them. It trusted emptiness and reflection. It allowed its protagonist to exist inside his loneliness rather than perform it for the audience. That approach became an important influence while shaping Caspian’s character. He is not a man actively fighting isolation. He has already learned to live with it. He jokes with his machines, follows the same routines every day, and accepts a reality that has become normal to him. In many ways, Caspian became an extension of the questions that originally inspired the film, questions about purpose, obsession, ambition, and what remains when the things we spend our lives pursuing begin to lose their meaning.
This helped me understand that science fiction could carry that kind of emotional weight. Final Days became my attempt to explore those ideas through a voice that felt deeply personal while still existing within a larger speculative world.
Building Caspian's World
Designing, modeling, and assembling a fully digital environment that reflected the themes of isolation, routine, and quiet introspection at the heart of the film.
Unlike traditional productions that begin with a physical set or location, every environment in Final Days had to be imagined and built from the ground up. The pod, the surrounding ocean, the distant structures beyond the viewport, and the countless details that filled Caspian's living space were all developed specifically for the film.
The process combined custom modeling, kit-bashed assets, environmental design, and extensive scene assembly within Unreal Engine, with additional modeling work completed in 3ds Max where required. While existing assets helped accelerate parts of the production, the overall design language, layout, and visual identity of the world were created specifically to support the story and emotional themes of the film.
From the beginning, the objective was not to build a futuristic spaceship, but to create a space that felt lived in. The pod needed to function as both a home and a prison. A place of comfort, routine, and familiarity, while simultaneously reminding the audience of Caspian's separation from the world beyond the glass.
Every object, screen, piece of furniture, and structural element was considered through that lens. The environment became an extension of the character himself, reflecting the routines, habits, and emotional state of someone who had spent years alone. More than a backdrop, the pod became a silent participant in the story, helping communicate ideas that were often left unspoken in the narration.
Why We Create
A film that began as a question about purpose eventually became a reminder of why creating still matters.
Final Days started as a personal reflection. A collection of thoughts written during a moment when I found myself questioning the very thing I had spent most of my life pursuing. It began with uncertainty, with the feeling that the endless pursuit of purpose could sometimes become a prison of its own making.
What followed was unexpected. The act of creating the film became the answer to the questions that inspired it. Through writing, designing, building, and shaping the world of Final Days, I was reminded that meaning is rarely found at the finish line. More often, it exists within the process itself.
Caspian's journey may take place inside a solitary pod drifting across an endless ocean, but the emotions that shaped him came from a very real place. In many ways, the film became a conversation between who I was when I wrote that first audio log and who I had become by the time the final frame was complete.
Perhaps that is what Final Days is ultimately about. Not the search for purpose, but the realization that purpose is often something we create for ourselves, one day, one choice, and one story at a time.
From Studio to Montreal
Final Days selected for exhibition at one of the world's most respected digital art gatherings.
Final Days started as a personal reflection. A collection of thoughts written during a moment when I found myself questioning the very thing I had spent most of my life pursuing. It began with uncertainty, with the feeling that the endless pursuit of purpose could sometimes become a prison of its own making.
What followed was unexpected. The act of creating the film became the answer to the questions that inspired it. Through writing, designing, building, and shaping the world of Final Days, I was reminded that meaning is rarely found at the finish line. More often, it exists within the process itself.
Caspian's journey may take place inside a solitary pod drifting across an endless choice, and one story at a time.
Credits
Written, Directed & Created By
M. Fahad Khan (FDK)
Narration & Voice Performance
M. Fahad Khan (FDK)
Production
FDK Studios
Created with
Unreal Engine & 3ds Max
Genre
Science Fiction Film
© 2026 FDK Studios. All rights reserved.
More Works
©2026
Final Days
Written as an audio diary and realized as a cinematic science-fiction short exploring purpose, isolation, and life at the edge of meaning.
Released
Animation
Cinematic
Project Overview
Final Days is a CGI cinematic short film set aboard a crashed space pod on an unknown planet. It follows Commander Caspian, a man stranded in total isolation, continuing the routines of a mission that no longer exists, recording his thoughts into an audio log for whoever might one day find him. The film has no traditional narrative arc. It observes a man waking, sitting, working through the night as he tries to find meaning under the illusion of purpose.
Built in 3ds Max and Unreal Engine over the course of a month, Final Days began not as a film, but as a personal audio diary. What started as a written reflection on purpose, isolation, and the cost of relentless creation gradually evolved into the voice of Caspian, a solitary man drifting through the final days of a world that has already moved on without him.
The film was written, voiced, directed, and produced by me, with every creative decision emerging from that original recording. The pod, the endless ocean beyond the viewport, the projected messages scattered across the walls, and the routines that define Caspian’s existence were all designed to externalize an internal question: what happens when the pursuit of purpose becomes the very thing that separates us from living?
The Writing Came First
How a period of relentless creative work led to an unexpected reflection on purpose, isolation, and the experiences we sacrifice in pursuit of our ambitions.
Final Days did not begin with visuals, a story, or even a film. It began with a realization.
For more than a week, I had barely left my studio. My days had collapsed into a cycle of waking up, working, sleeping, and repeating. I was completely consumed by the project I was building, spending long hours in front of a screen without giving much thought to the world beyond it.
One night, it started raining. I remember looking out through the window and watching it fall outside. Nature was right there, only a few steps away. I could remember exactly how rain felt on my skin, yet I had no desire to leave my chair and experience it. That realization stayed with me. The rain wasn’t inaccessible. The outside world wasn’t locked away from me. Yet somehow, I felt confined within the space I had created for myself.
It raised a question that had been quietly lingering in my mind for a long time. We spend years chasing purpose, building careers, creating work, and pursuing ambitions. But what happens when that pursuit becomes so consuming that it disconnects us from the very experiences that make life meaningful? If everything were to end tomorrow, what would all that effort actually amount to? Would the work matter more than the moments we never stopped to experience?
I began writing these thoughts down. At first they were fragmented observations, personal reflections about purpose, creativity, obsession, and the invisible traps we build for ourselves. But the more I wrote, the more those thoughts began to take shape. Eventually they became a voice. Caspian’s voice.
That same night, I recorded the text as an audio diary, much like the personal voice notes I occasionally make to clear my head. When I played it back, something unexpected happened. Images immediately began forming in my mind. The interior of the pod. The ocean beyond the viewport. The screens. The solitude. The world of Final Days emerged from the recording itself. The film came afterward. The voice came first.
An Unexpected Reference Point
The film that helped me realize that science fiction could carry deeply personal and introspective stories.
While developing Final Days, the closest creative reference point was Duncan Jones’ Moon. Not because of its setting, visuals, or story, but because of the emotional territory it explored. Moon understood something about isolation that many science-fiction films often overlook. It is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is repetitive and almost invisible. A tiny shift that happens when a person spends enough time alone with their own thoughts.
That idea resonated deeply with me because Final Days was born from a similar place. The project emerged during a period when I had become consumed by work, spending days confined to my studio, disconnected from experiences that once felt important. Looking out at the world through a window began to feel strangely similar to Caspian looking out from his pod. The circumstances were different, but the emotions were familiar.
What I admired most about Moon was its willingness to sit with those emotions rather than constantly escape them. It trusted emptiness and reflection. It allowed its protagonist to exist inside his loneliness rather than perform it for the audience. That approach became an important influence while shaping Caspian’s character. He is not a man actively fighting isolation. He has already learned to live with it. He jokes with his machines, follows the same routines every day, and accepts a reality that has become normal to him. In many ways, Caspian became an extension of the questions that originally inspired the film, questions about purpose, obsession, ambition, and what remains when the things we spend our lives pursuing begin to lose their meaning.
This helped me understand that science fiction could carry that kind of emotional weight. Final Days became my attempt to explore those ideas through a voice that felt deeply personal while still existing within a larger speculative world.
Building Caspian's World
Designing, modeling, and assembling a fully digital environment that reflected the themes of isolation, routine, and quiet introspection at the heart of the film.
Unlike traditional productions that begin with a physical set or location, every environment in Final Days had to be imagined and built from the ground up. The pod, the surrounding ocean, the distant structures beyond the viewport, and the countless details that filled Caspian's living space were all developed specifically for the film.
The process combined custom modeling, kit-bashed assets, environmental design, and extensive scene assembly within Unreal Engine, with additional modeling work completed in 3ds Max where required. While existing assets helped accelerate parts of the production, the overall design language, layout, and visual identity of the world were created specifically to support the story and emotional themes of the film.
From the beginning, the objective was not to build a futuristic spaceship, but to create a space that felt lived in. The pod needed to function as both a home and a prison. A place of comfort, routine, and familiarity, while simultaneously reminding the audience of Caspian's separation from the world beyond the glass.
Every object, screen, piece of furniture, and structural element was considered through that lens. The environment became an extension of the character himself, reflecting the routines, habits, and emotional state of someone who had spent years alone. More than a backdrop, the pod became a silent participant in the story, helping communicate ideas that were often left unspoken in the narration.
Why We Create
A film that began as a question about purpose eventually became a reminder of why creating still matters.
Final Days started as a personal reflection. A collection of thoughts written during a moment when I found myself questioning the very thing I had spent most of my life pursuing. It began with uncertainty, with the feeling that the endless pursuit of purpose could sometimes become a prison of its own making.
What followed was unexpected. The act of creating the film became the answer to the questions that inspired it. Through writing, designing, building, and shaping the world of Final Days, I was reminded that meaning is rarely found at the finish line. More often, it exists within the process itself.
Caspian's journey may take place inside a solitary pod drifting across an endless ocean, but the emotions that shaped him came from a very real place. In many ways, the film became a conversation between who I was when I wrote that first audio log and who I had become by the time the final frame was complete.
Perhaps that is what Final Days is ultimately about. Not the search for purpose, but the realization that purpose is often something we create for ourselves, one day, one choice, and one story at a time.
From Studio to Montreal
Final Days selected for exhibition at one of the world's most respected digital art gatherings.
In August 2025, Final Days was selected for exhibition at RGBMTL Montreal, a nonprofit collective and annual event celebrating digital art on an international scale. Now in its fourth year, the exhibition featured works by 180 international artists, selected by 24 curators from around the world. Each year, RGBMTL invites 25 artists to select between 5 and 10 artists each, creating an extensive collective curation that highlights a wide range of practices from creators worldwide. Works are presented across varied installation formats, including wall projections, CRT monitors, and LED panels.
Being selected for RGBMTL meant Final Days was placed alongside established artists from across the globe, chosen not through an open submission process but through the considered recommendation of curators within the digital art community. For a film that began as a personal voice note recorded late at night after weeks of isolation inside a studio, eventually finding its way onto the walls of an international exhibition in Montreal was not something that had been planned for. It simply meant that it is something that happens when the work is honest enough to travel.
Credits
Written, Directed & Created By
M. Fahad Khan (FDK)
Narration & Voice Performance
M. Fahad Khan (FDK)
Production
FDK Studios
Created with
Unreal Engine & 3ds Max
Genre
Science Fiction Film
© 2026 FDK Studios. All rights reserved.
More Works
©2026