Inspiration

For week 3 of Video & Sound, I collaborated with Chenyan Yu. We reinterpreted the tale of mermaid as a story of searching identity.

The Little Mermaid fairytale focuses on the protagonist's journey trying to attain a new identity as human, denying her previous identity as a mermaid. However, the story ends as a tragedy, since the mermaid is not accepted neither as human nor as a mermaid.

Our inspiration came from René Magritte's Collective Invention which sees the traditional mermaid in a different perspective. Mermaids have a hybrid identity between fish and human. Based on the mermaid's hybrid identity, we wanted to give a twist on the protagonist's identity search in The Little Mermaid.

What if the mermaid lives in a society where fish are the dominant species? What if the mermaid can have multiple choices to find its identity, not just being a human? Hybrid-fish is the tale of the mermaid reimagined, searching its identity between fish, human, and mermaid.

Moodboard

We started with gathering images for the main protagonist, mermaid. Unlike the traditional image of mermaid, we wanted mermaid with fish head and human legs. Some references we looked at were The Collective Invention(2015) and The Shape of Water(2017).

The scenes had to be underwater. However, we didn't want any clear, beautiful water - we wanted some green water that was somewhat murky and eerie.

In case of the scenes, we had an idea that the first-person view protagonist could find out its mermaid identity by looking at its shadow with human legs and fish head. Also, the background would be a restaurant where fish enjoying human meat, since fish are the dominant species.

Story structure

Chenyan gathered our story ideas into an awesome journey map and character relationship diagram. See the details and idea notes below:

Key elements and characters

• key elements: shadow, journey, water, ocean, other sea creatures, finding identity
• characters: first-person (mermaid), other sea creatures/fish,
• the (dis)advantages of the medium
• advantage: can be moving, control with more interactive, be, feels more like your story (more empathy / can sympathize more)
• disadvantage: time consuming (unity), we have to be good at 3d modelling -> buy assets, can't change scenes quickly unlike video(=can't use montage)
• how to maintain the sense of story in the nonlinear narrative
• Connect the scene with the story
• Underwater = beginning / Overwater = end
• Use scenes to divide different steps of the story
• Put objects that user can interact with
• some selection for players(human, half-human mermaid, fish)
• you can go back select again(maybe)

Journey

Character Relationship Diagram

Storyboard

The final storyboard consists of fives scenes. The three scenes below refers to the player's selection of identity: mermaid, fish or human.

Background

You are inside a bowl, marinated in sauce with other unconscious humans. A fish cook discovers you, looks at you with disgust, and throws you away to the floor. You have escaped the fish bowl.

You escape from the kitchen and approach the dining hall. Fish are seated on the table and enjoying human legs. So this is a human restaurant. As you try to hold on vomiting you look down at the floor. You see a strange shadow having the very legs that the fish are eating - that is nor human nor fish. You have some choices: take a seat at the dining table or go back to the kitchen.

When player selects mermaid

You sit on the table and pick up the knife. Then, you run away from the dining hall with the knife. Distant noises tell that the fish cook is chasing you. You finally reach a dead end with an old mirror.
A shadowy figure starts to appear from the mirror. As you approach the mirror, you find out why you felt so uncomfortable - you are a mermaid, a hybrid with fish head and human legs. You take a step into the mirror. As your reflection runs away from you, you start chasing it with your human legs and fish gills.

When player selects fish

You sit on the table and pick up the fork. It seems everyone is having their dinner happily. Suddenly all looks like perfectly normal. You suddenly feel like sitting in the dining table, sensing a warm and welcoming atmosphere.
As you take a seat in the dining table, your body grows and your vision turns into fish-eye vision. You happily munch the human legs.

When player selects human

You go back to the kitchen. A group of humans are caught inside a cage in the kitchen. As you approach, a human glances at you with contempt, looking at your appearance.
As you open the cage, the humans escape yelling at the fish cook. They kill the cook with kitchen utensils. As your vision start to blur, you see the humans running into the dining hall.