Building The Yokai Journal

I've always believed that the best way to learn is through experimentation. In the beginning, it's important to play with the tools, understand their strengths and limitations, and build a foundation. But eventually, there comes a point where the only way to truly improve is to start making things.

It's a bit like training for mixed martial arts. You can spend endless hours doing conditioning and drills, but sooner or later you have to step into the cage. That's where real learning begins.

Over the past month, I've completed five films, including two projects made for competitions: a festival trailer and a movie concept trailer. More importantly, each project has allowed me to sharpen my skills and better understand this new generation of filmmaking tools. For this latest project, I'm working primarily with Google Flow and, more recently, Dreamina Seedance 2.0.

With The Yokai Journal, I wanted to take the next step and attempt something more ambitious. Throughout my career as a filmmaker, I've always been drawn to fantasy and period stories, and creating a medieval action series felt like a challenge worth taking on.

I chose the web series format because it offers flexibility. A short film often feels like a one-off experience, while a feature film would be far too demanding for a one-man production. A series allows ideas to grow organically. If something doesn't work, I can rethink it and improve it. If audiences connect with it, I can continue expanding the world.

And yes, this is very much a one-man operation. From the writing and creative development to prompting, editing, post-production, and even music selection, everything is being handled by myself. In many ways, the series is also an experiment: a place where I can continue learning while telling stories.

The project itself was inspired by many things I grew up loving. Like many people, I have always been fascinated by samurai, ninjas, and Japanese folklore. Movies, manga, and Japanese popular culture had a strong influence on me during my teenage years, and those influences naturally found their way into this world.

Another reason for embarking on this project is to explore serialized storytelling. Writing a series presents different challenges compared with features, short films, or commercials, and it's something I want to spend more time developing. At the moment, the plan is for The Yokai Journal to consist of four episodes, each running between five and ten minutes.

I have also been inspired by several remarkable AI-generated series that creators have shared on YouTube. Seeing what independent filmmakers are able to achieve today encouraged me to begin this journey. What was once impossible for a single person is now becoming increasingly accessible.

The prelude serves as an introduction to the world and to the two main characters. I hope it gives viewers a glimpse of what's to come and perhaps sparks enough curiosity to follow the series when future episodes arrive. It will take time, but I look forward to sharing them on my channel.

More than anything, I hope people who discover The Yokai Journal will also enjoy my other works. I never want to be confined to a single genre. My goal has always been simple: to keep learning, to keep experimenting, and to continue making films that excite me, whether they are horror, fantasy, drama, or something entirely different.

The Yokai Journal is envisioned as a collection of stories and encounters, almost like pages from an old travel diary. The Mask of Tengu is only the first chapter of a much larger world.