Project Conceptualization

Now, a little update to the Journal again…

This time around our assignment is indeed to pitch two ideas for a animation short and write a little about what style and inspirations I used.

The Pitch:  A fish named Spicy, who lives in an aquarium.  Spicy and his best friend, miss Scuba diver, an aquarium decoration who blow air bubbles  into the water for a living. Spicy feels that he is unappreciated, one day getting enough.

When it comes to style or look to the short, I’m going for the cartoony look, with simple models and textures. However there will be a good amount of environment details in the short, considering its an fresh water aquarium it will be plants, a “background” in order to get the typical aquarium background, at this stage I’m unsure if there should be any other fish thats shown in the camera. Perhaps he is the only one there. Also this photo here do not represent how I want Miss scuba to look. But it basically got the same function in the aquarium.

Most people have heard about Finding Nemo by Pixar which is a good animation movie. There is a scene there in the beginning where Nemo is put into an aquarium which I find to be a rather interesting environment. An artificial underwater environment fish tank. Studying that scene can also help, and not to mention a real aquarium.. which of course I got access to hehe. The Lighting here would be a challenge, especially when it comes to create the mood of the film, seeing that Spicy is rather lonely, and perhaps a little dampen atmosphere . Still there would have to be done more planning and research into that to find what I’m looking for than there is time left of the assignment.

The Plot: Spicy lives his life quietly in the little aquarium. He is not quite like other fishes in the aquarium whom which spends their lives without a concern, except the occasional how much food will we get today, and hope that someday someone will drop the entire food canister into the water. No, Spicy has his attention elsewhere and his eye on miss Scuba whom playfully blow bubbles into the water for Spicy to swim and play around in.

He do however have a hard time understanding miss Scuba, thinking she is a bit quiet and perhaps shy. Over time Spicy has grown into a more romantic view towards miss Scuba. Concerned that she does not feel the same way. He goes into more drastic ways to get her attention. Its easy to see that memory is not his strongest side because of his constant anticipation on the wait for a response.

In hope to get her response, we see him swim into the scene holding ( with his fins) three rocks and attempts to juggle the rocks, but after a quick juggle he stops and waits for a response not getting any he throws the rocks away, quickly swims out and quickly swims back into the scene this time doing fish acrobatics, still no response . Having saved the best for last he pushed a tiny plastic barrel ( Aquarium decoration) into the scene, in front of miss Scuba – which he then pulls “magically” out from “behind” his back two dinner plated complete with fish food, then quickly ties a napkin around his neck and begins to gobble the food, looking up to see that he has been rejected one more. Now upset he lets his anger take control, tightens his right fin and smashes the barrel, that despite the hard “impact” gets a little pushes and slowly falls over to the side because of the water.

Now he swims up and gets the courage the push her a little and as it turns out she is not that stable and slowly tips over, Spicy now shocked that she’s moving, finally a reaction! Now suddenly become concerned since she’s falling to the ground and the air hose connected to her becomes loose. Spicy now panics as she lies there with no bubbles coming out. Ignoring the bubbles thats comes out of the sand – in his mind those have nothing to do with miss Scuba and are just ordinary bubbles.

Now in despair, he attempts to get her up, or turn her around with no bubbles. Thats when he looks up to the surface and down on her, up again and down. Thinking that perhaps I need to get her to the surface, in an all out struggle he manages to get her to the surface, only to loose the grip. Now seeing her fall to the group, he gives up. From Miss Scuba’s POV we see he swims away and then to his little hideout, where we will see that he falls to sleep / rest.

When he wakes up, he swims around the corner only to find her standing in her usual spot blowing out bubbles once more, ( The owner fixed it). Thrilled and happy, all of his previous troubles now gone, we see him Swimming thrilled over and continuously swimming around her as we move away from the scene. Forever “doomed” to love her. And thats basically it.

A small note here, I’m still fairly unsure about the ending, I have a few different also, but this one is the one I feel working better at the moment. If I am to pursue this idea in the future a lot more work has to be done with Plot.