An animated short film made by a group of young Kiwis will screen at pop culture Mecca San Diego Comic-Con.

Shelldon tells the story of a hermit crab on the hunt for a new shell to replace the blue bottle cap he lives in. It was created in 2017 by a group of students in their final year at Auckland's Media Design School.

Last week, the graduates found out Shelldon will screen as part of the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival in San Diego in July.

Art director and technical director Guy Glasson, 25, says that although the film's been selected to screen at a series of film festivals around the world, the Comic Con screening was the one that had the team excited the most.

READ MORE:

* Kiwi students awarded for snail horror comedy

* Kiwi film Accidents, Blunders and Calamities wins award at Comi-Con

* Jeremy Wells-voiced mini Kiwi blockbuster getting global attention

Four members of the team, including Glasson, will fly out to Los Angeles and travel down to San Diego for the convention and its attached film festival, where they'll speak as part of a panel discussion.

Supplied Shelldon was made by students from Auckland's Media Design School.

They plan to use the trip as an opportunity to network with others in the film industry, as well as to enjoy themselves.

"I'm really looking forward to going," Glasson said. "It should be good fun. It was one of the things on my bucket list to, so getting it out so early is quite cool. ... It's sort of a dream come true for most of our team."

San Diego Comic-Con is widely regarded as one of the biggest evens on the pop culture calendar, and is attended each year by some of the biggest stars in television and film.

Media Design School has had teacher-directed films selected to screen as part of the festival before, but Shelldon is the first film made entirely by students to be picked.

The idea for the film's story came from 21-year-old director Isaac Gilich, who saw a hermit crab using a bottle cap for shelter on a trip to Tonga.

It originally told a more complex story with a more overt environmental message; simplifying the film's plot was the key to making it work.

"We had to adapt it a lot because my story was a bit too long and it didn't really make the right sense for the style we wanted to do," Gilich said.

Supplied Despite its cute title character, Shelldon has a serious message about pollution.

"So we had to adapt it a lot and come up with a new ending. My original story focused a lot on the environmental issue, but that was really hard to get across with this cute little crab, so we kind of made the story more about his journey to the shell, and going across the beach, and the environmental issue became like a secondary issue for people to interpret."