Project Odyssey Season 1 was the first community-led AI film competition at scale. Co-organized by Civitai, ElevenLabs, ThinkDiffusion, and Realdreams, it ran in mid-2024 with submissions closing July 16, 2024. Winners announced July 30, 2024 at a livestream awards ceremony.
The category structure rewarded breadth: 5 main categories (3D Animation, Music Video, Narrative, Open Format, Behind-The-Scenes) each with 1st/2nd/3rd Prize plus Runner-Up, Community Choice, and Beginner Award placements - 30 main awards in total. On top of that, 12 sponsor awards from Civitai, ElevenLabs, ThinkDiffusion, Morph Studio, LensGo, Domo AI, DeepMake, Neural Frames, Tripo AI, FBRC.ai/AILA, Luma, and RealDreams gave smaller studios paths to recognition without competing in the headline categories.
In Narrative, "RŌHKI - Episode 1 Trailer" took 1st, "Yōkai" took 2nd, "Next of Kin" took 3rd. In Music Video, "Get To You" won 1st, "Jazz Scene USA" 2nd, "AI Evolution" 3rd. In 3D Animation, "An Interstellar Journey of Discovery" led with "Secrets of the Abyss" and "I've Come To Bargain" following. Open Format saw "The Mermaid's Truth" take 1st, "Destiny" 2nd, "Microcosmos" 3rd. The Behind-The-Scenes category - unusual for a film festival - drew strong entries showing the actual workflows behind the films, with "Get To You - BTS" winning 1st.
The sponsor-award model is what set Project Odyssey apart: rather than treating AI tooling as neutral infrastructure, the competition explicitly mapped tools to films, recognising creators who built distinctive work on specific stacks (ElevenLabs for voice, Morph Studio for compositing, LensGo for camera control, etc).