I tried to visualize things that have no precedence in our world – like a whole ecosystem of prey and predators and a completely alien terraform.
The Story
A wormhole appears all of a sudden beyond Neptune. The verdict is divided on whether human beings should attempt to explore the same. However, the bane and the boon of a human being is the trait of curiosity. Should we limit our curiosity? At what cost? Is the urge to discover worth losing what we possess?
Unable to control our curiosity, and believing that it is a Sign, we send six astronauts to explore. Unfortunately, they along with their ship mysteriously disappear the minute they near the wormhole.
My story stays with the astronauts and their ship. By the time they exit the wormhole, only one is alive. He wakes up to find a gigantic mysterious looking planet in front of his ship. He lands on the planet and explores it in detail and soon realizes that the planet is actually a living being. He sees metal trees whose metal leaves dissolve in the acid rains that keep showering, only for the dissolved leaves to start sprouting new plants. He sees clouds made of glass which are actually predators gobbling up black colored boulders that seem to move as though they have life. He walks across a massive expanse that seems to be solidified lava, only to realize that this was a river of diamond, solidified for some reason. He sees an impossibly huge pillar-like structure and understands that this is the life of the entire planet, somehow seeming to pull in energy from the atmosphere and channelizing it to the innards of the planet. At some point of time, he suddenly feels a tremendous seismic activity, and witnesses the planet suddenly seems to be growing tentacles. He tries to escape the plant on his Hummingbird, and from the relative safety of his mother ship witnesses the tentacles of the planet reaching out to another planet, grabbing it forcefully and swallowing it in a cataclysmic turn of events. When he realizes that the planet is actually a living predator and has sensed the presence of earth through the ship that reached it through the wormhole he desperately sends out an SOS to earth, and succumbs to the forces unleased by the planet while swallowing another. I leave to the imagination of the viewers what would be the price earth would pay for its curiosity now.
I used IMAX cameras to shoot all the locations I created set in Maya. The camera features in Maya allowed me to showcase a widescreen project.
The Mothership approaches the planet
The Mothership
The Hummingbird Approaching the Planet
The hummingbird soars through the lightning and tendrils of medusa. Hummingbird is one of the six shuttles onboard the mothership. The protagonist flies through the turbulent skies of the planet, avoiding its energy beams.
The Astronaut Explores the Planet
Terrain of Medusa
The protagonist walks across the diamond river of Medusa, exploring its vastness. Once a flowing river, it has now solidified.
Metal Trees
The trees are made out of unknown metal. When the leaves fall off the stems, it acts as seeds, that birth humungous carnivorous clouds that eat organic materials.
The Tree of Life
The largest structure on the planet seems to gather energy from the atmosphere and direct it to the innards of the planet, providing the energy required for the planet.
Glass Clouds
Predators that are at the top of the pyramid in the planet’s ecosystem and are made of glass. The deadly offsprings of the metal trees. Once the pray is captured within its bubble, the cloud releases acid to melt its prey and consume its juice. If the clouds don't gather enough food, it crashes onto the planet and becomes smithereens, which then is taken in by the soil to grow into more metal trees.
Medusa The Planet Extends its Tendrils
Just like the Greek God Medusa, the planet unwinds its tendrils and shoots them out in the distance.
Medusa’s Snakes
The tendrils shoot out blasts of energy into space towards areas where the planet sense life. The energy opens up wormholes allowing the planet to move from one place to the other and consume other planets.
Medusa consuming the core energy of a dying star
Once the planet discovers another one, its tendrils capture the hapless one and pull towards itself.
Energy Blast Directed Towards the Prey
Once the prey is sufficiently near to Medusa, it bombards it with an energy blast that strips away the outer core, exposing the inner core. Medusa pulls and swallows this inner core, as a result of which its size grows correspondingly.
