Weird Fishes ... My New Project

I've decided to enter Aniboom.com's In Rainbows Music Video Contest, in which you pick any song from Radiohead's new album and make a music video for it. The band is involved in the judging, which is pretty awesome. Doing a project like this by yourself is a little daunting, but I'm an animator, and Radiohead is my favorite band ever, so how big of a loser would I be if I didn't at least try?

The great thing about this contest is that the first entry is a storyboard submission, after which you submit a minute-long animation to the song you choose. The winner of that phase get $10,000 to make the entire video.

So I've started some ideas in my sketchbook, and hopefully soon I'll have a rough storyboard together. The song I've chosen is the excellent "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."

My initial ideas for the lead character were very non-specific. I didn't really know what I wanted him to look like, just how I wanted him to move ...


I then tried a robot design who has some of the characteristics of Thom Yorke, since I'd like the character to exhibit some of his movements ...

I finally decided to use a more realistic character ... based on a homeless guy that lives in my neighborhood. I plan on using a more abstract design in the final animation, but I like starting with something grounded in reality, so now the character automatically has a history and story behind him.

Here are some ideas for "worms and weird fishes," which are described in the song. I think my final fish designs will be more "weird" than "fish," but I drew these without looking at any real fish. I'd like them to look like they came out of someone's imagination, but these don't look strange enough to me ...


Below are some quick compositions of what the scene might look like. I still need to put down a lot more ideas as there needs to be much more going on in this scene, but for now, this helps me get an idea of the direction I need to follow.