Day of the Fish

The theme I decided to go with when I started making Poy was "coping with loss". This theme has stayed pretty constant throughout my development process but the content of the plot varied until I had a solid idea. The story I have now takes some influence from the Mexican "Day of the Dead" (Dia De Los Muertos) festival, where a celebration of remembrance and prayer for those who have died takes place every year. It is believed that the souls of the dead visit the living during this time.

I adapted this for Poy - the idea being that when people die, their soul escapes from their bodies in the form of flying fish and on the day of the dead festival they fly through the town in which the main character resides. The basic plot for the film was that Poy's mother had died prior to the animation and upon noticing her soul flying past on the day of the dead she sets after it. This brought up the issue of how I would be able to explain the concept of souls/fish and how the audience would know it was Poy's Mother she was in pursuit of.

My initial resolution to this was to open the animation with a pan across a wall mural depicting people dying and their souls escaping in the form of fish, then to cut to Poy holding a photo of herself with her late Mother. The problems here are that opening a short film with a pan across a wall mural would frankly be boring, use up time and that Poy holding a photograph is a poor way of conveying the plot and a bit cliché.

The solution I have now is to open the film with Poy beside her Mother on her death bed, passing away and her fish escaping. This would make for a more interesting introduction to the film and should be easier for whoever is watching to catch on to the idea that the fish is a soul.

Developing Poy

Here are some of the first sketches I did of Poy, whilst coming to the end of Clouds' production.

The idea of this girl and a world inhabited with flying fish was already in place, however I was without any ideas for a story. Once Clouds had been completed, my attention was drawn towards pitching an idea for my final year film which would appear on the Clouds section of my site under "coming soon".This involved drawing a set of thumbnail storyboards and led to a basic plot structure which has remained fairly intact from the initial idea.

The story for my animation focuses on a girl who is trying to retrieve the soul of her dead Mother, which has the form of a flying fish (amongst many other flying fish in the sky). In my initial storyboards the connection between the girl and the fish was left pretty ambiguous and had a very silly ending in which the girl ended up being eaten by it, being spat out the other end and turning into one herself. Since then the plot went through several changes.

This is the original storyboard for my film pitch:

Initial Concept

The idea for "Poy" began with a drawing I did whilst Clouds was still in production. It depicts a red girl with an odd hat and a top with "poy" written on it. "Poy" is simply "boh" mirrored upside down, boh being a sort of trademark/logo I often use in drawings. It may have also been influenced by the Boredoms song of the same name.

The idea formed a series of sketches involving giant fish flying in the sky alongside this character, giving an initial basis for some sort of narrative. Knowing I would be producing an animated film in my final year at Uni I decided to develop it as my chosen idea.

At the time I was watching an animated series directed by Masaaki Yuasa, "Kaiba", which has been a massive influence on me. I found the style of the architecture/backgrounds and themes very inspiring - it led me to want to create an animation that could somehow affect an audience on an emotional level. The theme I went for when coming up with initial ideas for Poy was "coping with loss".