Don't Be Tuna'Ive

by Alizeewqz, PaolaNavarro, ablasaigh, blou, and veenikulina on 30 May 2023 for Rookie Awards 2023

What if an overconfident fish mistook a sushi restaurant for a spa? For our final third year proyect, as a team we had to create a 20s animation in 6 weeks. This story is a reminder that sometimes what can seem to be a pleasant experience can just be the first step of a more violent and vicious plan.

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Don't Be Tuna'Ive

by PaolaNavarro

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What if an overconfident fish mistook a sushi restaurant for a spa?

In life you should be careful who you trust, salt and sugar often look the same.

This story invites you to be more careful about what’s going on next to you, you might escape a darker fate this way. To show that, we wanted the audience to have the occasion to see two different points of view. The fish, who just enjoys the massage thinking it’s just its caregiver giving him appreciation for its mere existence, and Takashi, planning to make some good sushi and just cares about the fish being relaxed and unaware while it’s being prepared to be cooked.

We decided to go for an advertisement with a comedic style (likeJapanese adds), full of irony and a lot of sarcasm. This project took us 6 weeks of pre-production and 6 weeks of production.

Takashi is the chef of a sushi restaurant situated in Japan. The goal was to give a good impression of his personality and to show his Japanese heritage without going too cliché.

Given the scenario for the story we decided to go for a more bubbly-looking Takashi, giving more space for crazy expressions on his face. He would be a bit on the chubby size, clearly enjoying some really good food on a day to day basis. His large face and prominent features would give him a more sympathetic attitude.

Furthermore, the hands of Takashi were going to be exposed in the foreground for most of the shots. Therefore, we had to be very precise to define how his hands would look and move.

For the background characters we decided, due to the time limit we had, to duplicate Takashi and add to them hats, and a mask. The colors of the clothes would also change.

Finally, for the shading we decided to do semi-realistic textures like Pixar movies.

The other character of the story is no other than a very confident tuna (and maybe a bit too naive). Despite being a fish, he needs to be pleasant to look at and make the audience want to feel empathy for him.

But don’t get too attached, he might not stay for long…

The story takes place in a traditional Japanese restaurant. To keep a more authentic look we decided to avoid including plastic as much as possible. Most of the tools used by the cook will be made out of ceramics, wood and a bit of metal, giving a warmer atmosphere in the process.

We had several challenges that we needed to face :

For the storyboard it was to keep the illusion of a spa until the end and to show a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere at the beginning being slowly turned into an unpleasant atmosphere.

For the key shots (and the colorscripts) was to show the lighting of each shot slightly change, from a calm and soft atmosphere into a terrifying one. Our goal was to prepare the audience for the inevitable doom of our lovely fish.