Mars turns from dusty dead zone to Earth-like paradise in Terraform, a striking sci-fi short created by five recent graduates of French visual-effects school ArtFx.

“Terraform is a short film mixing live-action footage and CGI,” wrote team member Thomas Nivet in an e-mail to Wired. “It tells the story of the planet Mars, being terraformed.”

The six-minute short (above) flows like a folk tale being read to a child in a far-distant future. “One day, the fire birds tore the sky apart,” says the voiceover, just before a wave of terraforming machines blaze through the Martian atmosphere and land on the rocky red planet. Splendid shots of spaceships and other machinery follow. -wired