ABOUT

Metamorphosis Island was a short film project worked on from September 2021 to May 2022 as the final assignment for my course in Animation & Illustration at TUS. The assignment was specifically to develop and produce a body of work for final assessment. The emphasis was not necessarily on having a finished product but on the process of creating the film itself.

STORY & DEVELOPMENT

I came into this project with two vague ideas for what I wanted to do with this short film, both having a surreal stint to each. One idea involved two explorers finding a strange island. The other had something to do with a peacock, an owl and masks.

After a while I found myself being able to use the first idea more than the latter and so that became the plot for Metamorphos Island.

One of the first concept sketches I made for my story idea, which became the basis for the opening sequence in the film. I had toyed with the idea of the setting involving an archipelago of small islands that the explorers pass by before seeing the mysterious island but it was dropped early on.

STORY PITCH

"The story opens with two characters floating in a boat on the sea. Ahead of them they see a very large island with a glowing aura coming from it. Suddenly something large and fish-like capsizes the boat, forcing the two to swim ashore on a beach. They find some makeshift weapons from the remains of a previous explorer and make the trek up into the forests above.

Along the way they find strange plants and creatures that appear to spawn from the dead remains of other creatures. They even find the remains of a village overtaken by fungal life.

They eventually end up at a lake with a large mushroom-like tree growing out of the centre. Suddenly the sea-beast appears from the lake and attacks the two again. There’s a large fight between the explorers and the sea-beast in which one of the explorers is killed. At the end the survivor manages to kill the fish, but is badly wounded in the process.

They collapse in a bed of fungi that slowly envelope their body. After a period of time the fungi splits open and a large humanoid creature emerges from the dead body, spreads its wings and takes off."

On the advice of my lecturer, I drew up a map showing the island and the path the characters would take throughout the story. This was to help with staging each segment of the film and placing the camera in a coherent manner