Story
Building on the geographical and historical research from the first stage of the project, I began shaping the narrative through a character who would guide the audience into this world. Rather than presenting the environment in isolation, I wanted the story to be experienced through someone actively interacting with it.
To structure this narrative, I used the Story Circle framework that I learnt during Term 2. In its simplest form, the story follows a character, X, living in a dystopian desert city where water has become a scarce and valuable resource. During his search for water, he spots an unnatural phenomenon: a vertical column of water rising upward from a distant structure. Driven by curiosity and necessity, he travels to the site and discovers an abandoned stepwell. Inside, he finds a ledge with a rope left behind, which he uses to rappel down. At the bottom, he encounters an underground water body. When he drinks from it, his perception shifts dramatically; he begins to see fish and aquatic creatures floating freely around him as if the desert itself is revealing a submerged world.
The story draws on the idea of a mirage, a common experience in the desert, but exaggerates it into a surreal fictional story. It blends the earlier research on ancient water systems, lost rivers, and buried sea life with the original idea of a hidden treasure, transforming it into something more abstract and psychological.
Moodboard and Concept Art
To support the visual direction, I created a moodboard that collected references for every part of the story: dystopian industrial landscapes, Indian stepwell geometry, desert palettes, textures of rusted machinery, stylised water effects, and surreal interpretations of aquatic life. To organise the flow of the narrative, I broke the story into a prologue and three acts:
Prologue – establishing the premise of an industrial, desolate world.
Act 1 – the character travelling across the desert towards the stepwell on his bike.
Act 2 – the descent through the stepwell and the journey down.
Act 3 – the underground cave with glowing water body and the appearance of the floating fish.
At this stage, I also began working on a rough Pre-visualisation to test compositions. This helped me understand how the narrative would feel visually. Based on the pre-vis frames, I drew over several shots to explore early concepts and consider the eventual look of the project.
This combination of story development, moodboarding, and rough visualisation became the foundation on which the project’s final aesthetic would develop.