A Girl and Digital Animation

Below is a really rough painting of what I had in mind of doing. This will be in colour but I made it black and white just so everything seems to blend in more easily to give a sense of what I want.

I kind of based it off of the concept of a 'wishing tree'; something that's lost in the mountains with only a few ruins to indicate a pathway to its existence. Also something that people would make a journey to find and is fairly hard to reach. The location of which I have taken inspiration from is the mountains of China (Tianzi Mountains) and the Yuanmingyuan Ruins (Old Summer Palace Ruins). The time of day would be around sunset (like the two images below) where the sun's light is just slightly lighting the location.

Below are some reference pictures/inspiration art I have found online (credits go to rightful owner).

"The Wish Tree" by Aurelie Neyret

Page One, Panel One: The video starts off with a close-up shot of a hand holding a pencil over a piece of written paper. The hand is not moving at all and is illuminated by a source of light giving off an aqua blue tint.*

Page One, Panel Two: We cut to a frontal shot of a girl in her late teens, alone in her room at her desk. She is whom the hand belongs to, and we see clearly, she is staring blankly/spacing out, hand resting against her cheek. The room is dark; her desk lamp, which is off-screen, is the only source of light that emits the blue tint.

Page Two, Panel Three: We cut to an overhead shot; a blue glow is the only thing that illuminates her working area for the camera to see. The camera is slowly panning screen right but we see nothing happening.*

Page Two, Panel Four: After a few seconds of slow panning, we see a large shape/shadow of a fish swim across the screen, the camera maintains its focus on the girl below.*

Page Three, Panel Five: We cut to a side medium shot of the girl, the camera slowly Dolly’s out. Distantly in the dark, silhouettes of fishes are swimming; there are many of them.

Page Three, Panel Six: As the camera is Dolly-ing out, a fish swims by the camera and across the screen, the camera switches focus from the girl to the fish at this point.

Page Four, Panel Seven: Camera cuts to a front, medium shot again of the girl. This time, all around her are gold fishes swimming idly in the air. She remains unfazed and seems as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

Page Four, Panel Eight: Camera cuts to an extreme close-up from the girl’s eyes and up. The camera slowly follows a fish making its way towards her and eventually bumps into her forehead.

Page Five, Panel Nine: Camera cuts back to the medium front shot, the girl jerks out of her trance/stupor. The room no longer has a blue tint to it; it emits the warm orange/yellow glow of an incandescent light bulb.

Page Five, Panel Ten: Camera stays in the same shot of the girl, she puts her hands down, relaxed and glances off to the side.

Page Six, Panel Eleven: Camera cuts to a close-up of a digital clock, it is close by to the lamp’s light range so it’s brightly lit. The clock reads 2AM.

Page Six, Panel Twelve: Camera cuts back to the front, medium shot of the girl. She pauses before reaching over towards the direction of the lamp and shuts it off. Everything cuts to black, signaling the end of the movie.

  Notes and Reference:

The aqua blue tint I want to mirror is similar to the effect you would get if you were in an aquarium cove. I want it to represent the difference between when the girl is spaced out to when she finally snaps back to reality. I also would for it to add to the effect of the fishes swimming; though they’re swimming in the air, the blue gives the watery feeling.

The fishes themselves would be modeled after a Comet goldfish or a Shubunkin goldfish. I want to go for one that has more of a flowing tail. Fishes appearing clearly on camera will be textured in detail whereas the fishes farther away from the source of light wouldn’t be as detailed in texture. However, after hearing advices, I may or may not do the flowing tail due to the difficulties of animating it but there is a possibility of doing it using nCloth for the tail alone. Depending on how it goes, I'll probably stick to the one with a more rigid tail (first image).

A friend whom I will also ask to play the part of the girl will provide the setting of this film. It’ll most likely be her own room (The layout is very similar to the one in the drawing).

*This particular scene is susceptible to change because of the difficult angle. I might make it so that it will be either from behind the girl Dolly-ing in or at a slightly lower than above angle shot.