Final Story

We see a character bent over his desk in front of his computer. He is listening/watching intently to a video tutorial. The character hardly moves, a slight blink, and he is quite obviously studying something. A voice from the video lesson is telling him about the assignment and an upcoming deadline. The deadline is confirmed as the character glances at a calendar on the wall and nods to himself confirming the date.

Our student is a small comic-sized character. Simple in shape, with cartoonish caricatured features, a slightly oversized head. He is sitting in an office/study with a computer and monitors around him. Due to his small stature, the office furniture is bigger than he is and effectively dwarves him.
Our character, sits back in his over-sized chair, looking thoughtful, with a rueful kind of smile on his face. His hands are “steeple”-d together. “A story. Hmm … what .. kind .. of .. story I wonder” he says to himself. He is stroking his chin as thinks.

As he is thinking, a small cloud starts to materialise above his head. Within the confines of this cloud we see some images stirring as the students idea comes to life. The images begin to sharpen slightly, but are still generally indiscernible.

A smile widens across his face. He mutters a few small words of affirmation, “aha”, “hmm hmm”, “yes”, and leaning forward (effectively standing on his chair) to reach his keyboard, he starts typing. However, horror of horrors, the instant his fingers touch the keys, the thought cloud immediately vaporises and disappears.

The smile is instantly wiped from the face of our character to be replaced with a look of shock and disbelief. Where has his wonderful idea gone?? He looks around, looking bemused. “What? Uh? What just happened?” He is obviously confused as his hands raise in disbelief, away from the keyboard, and he slumps down in his over-sized seat looking slightly dejected.

The characters face now turns to a frown as he obviously strains to think of something new. Another thought starts to materialise but this time fades quickly as our character is struggling to come up with a new idea. Despite repeated attempts, nothing seems to materialise in any permanent form. Our character is still sitting in his chair, his arms are crossed, and the frown on his face is deepening. Finally, in a display of obvious exasperation and with a few utterances of displeasure ,our guy jumps down from his chair and stomps off away from the study.

Our studious friend is now actively searching for ideas. We see him perusing his crammed bookshelf (oversized), seeking inspiration. He seems to be selecting books, flicking through them, and then dropping them to the floor. There seems to be no inspiration here, and the pile of books is growing around his feet, and with his short stature, the pile is rapidly approaching waist deep. With the last selected book thrown over his shoulder, he mutters something indiscernible (probably not very pleasant), and drags himself out of the small mountain of books that has been surrounding him.

Cursing and muttering to himself, he wanders over to stack of DVD’s, and repeats a similar process. We see him putting numerous DVD’s into a player, forwarding through them, and obviously not having any success.

In the sequence, we see our “hero” cogitating a new idea. With each new idea, a thought cloud appears, and the idea takes shape in the cloud but it fades quickly as it is not concrete or substantial enough. Depending on the source, we see the idea being influenced by its media.

It is becoming clear that time is passing, a clock on the wall reminds us of the passing time. Our character finds himself periodically checking the clock, and having occasional glances at the calendar on the wall.

Our little chap is still looking through books, watching TV, and watching movies, muttering to himself as he is failing to come up with anything new. We see gestures of frustration and exasperation. He is shaking his head as he paces around.

The student sits reading some comics and suddenly a grin appears on his face. Finally, a breakthrough, he works out another idea. A thought bubble appears and remains. A science-fiction idea appears, with space battles and space ships zooming around inside the thought bubble.

With a cry of elation, he scurries back to his computer. He jumps onto his (still) oversized chair and reaches for his keyboard. The instant he reaches for the keyboard, disaster, the bubble disappears along with his new idea.

A short squawk emits from his lips. He looks totally bemused again, and this time in a moment of desperation, he starts looking around to find where the idea went. He looks under the papers on his desk, and under the desk itself, as if he expects to find the idea hiding there. Finally he jumps down again, and starts pacing the floor muttering to himself, shaking his head. He is showing renewed signs of exasperation. Arms are gesturing as he paces back and forth. He even tries to take a swipe a cat as he vents his frustration.

He sits down at his Games Console and starts playing but his mood is not lifting, he is having a bad game. Our guy throws down the console pad in disgust and slumps back against his couch. A giant scowl across his face. Slowly, the expression starts to change. Our little guy has a new idea coming. The thought bubble appears and a game based idea (an FPS game, or Metal Gear type thing) appears inside the thought.

With a certain amount of haste our guy hurries back across to his computer, and as he reaches for the keyboard, inevitably, the bubble starts to fade. At this point our hero notices that the thought bubble is fading and starts to make a connection between reaching for the keyboard and the idea fading. He has an epiphany. One of those Eureka moments, and the moment is reflected in the expression in his face.

He slowly and carefully reaches for the keyboard, and watches the thought bubble start to fade. He moves his hands away from keyboard and the idea starts to solidify again.

He repeats the process. Again he reaches for the keyboard, the idea fades, and moving away from the keyboard, and the idea comes back again. Realising he has a potential problem here, he leans back in his chair with a thoughtful frown on his face. “Well, well, well. A prickly little conundrum”. How is he going to get his idea into the computer without the idea fading as he touches the keyboard.

We now begin a sequence where the character attempts to capture his idea and type it into his machine. We start to realise that the character can interact with his thought cloud which is a physical entity.

Our character looks above his head at the cloud and the ideas that are still floating there. He reaches up and gingerly pokes at the thought bubble. The bubble remains, and a few wisps of cloud appear around his finger where he has poked at it. He retracts his hand and looks at it thoughtfully. We can almost see the gears turning. He reaches up again and grabs hold of the cloud. With his free hand he reaches again for the keyboard but without success, the cloud starts to fade. A puzzled frown plays across our students face. “Bugger!”

Jumping down from the chair, our character walks away with the cloud floating slightly above and behind him. Over in the other side of the room, he is retrieving a long scarf from the coat stand. Walking back to his chair, trailing the apparently inordinately long scarf, muttering all the time to himself, he sits down, gathers his new weapon, and throws the scarf over his head. The scarf has not only gone over our characters head but over the cloud too. At this point, he ties it beneath his chin, pulling it tight so that the cloud is touching his head. Now, tentatively, he again reaches for the keyboard, but “hells teeth”, the thought starts to fade again, to the point at which point the scarf cuts through the rapidly dispersing cloud and lands on our heroes head, half covering his face – much to his obvious annoyance.

Again we signs of exasperation as our character starts looking around his desk space. Suddenly we see him place his head on the table. With one hand he reaches for the cloud and attempts to flatten it on the desk, with the other hand he grabs his stapler and proceeds to staple the cloud to the desk. Unfortunately, now he can’t seem to raise his head much above the desktop. Our hero’s head is attached to the thought cloud, which is now stapled to the desk. Our chap strains as much as he can, and raises his head just slightly. He reaches for the keyboard and yet again the cloud starts to fade, at which point it floats through the staple, releasing the characters head again which springs back upright into the chair back. At this point our hero has reached the end of his tether and decides to take drastic measures. His face is showing angry frowns. He storms off, stomping away from his desk, with the cloud still floating behind him. He returns with a hammer and a rather large nail. The character stands with his back against the nearest wall, puts the nail against the cloud, and hammers the nail through the cloud into the wall. This effectively pins his thought bubble securely to the wall.

Our most determined little character starts to move back to his desk. Unfortunately with the cloud still attached to the wall. Again there is a kind of elastic effect as he increases his distance from the wall to his desk but our man is nothing if not determined. With sinews straining and muscles bulging, or at least with a certain amount of apparent effort, we see the characters head being pulled back with the tension. His whole body is straining as he reaches for the keyboard.

As he reaches, once again, the thought bubble starts to fade. It fades sufficiently, there is a catastrophic failure in the restraint. The cloud slips over the nail and is released. With all the elastic tension suddenly released, our poor students head flies forward and hits the desk. Our character, through both word and deed, leaves us with no uncertainty about his very distinct feelings of displeasure at this latest failure.

This is the final straw for our hero. He is furious! He is seeing red, whilst turning the air the blue. He tries to grab at the thought bubble. He is jumping, flailing, grabbing and grasping, but every time he jumps, the thought cloud rises, and maintains a constant distance from our characters head.

Finally, our character gives in to the apparent futility. He slumps once more in his chair, leaning forward on his desk with his head in his hands. Shaking his head, and quietly murmuring to himself.

At which point, something strange happens. A wisp of the cloud snakes out and taps him on his shoulder. The character looks up at the cloud. Another small wisp appears, and forms a separate mini- thought bubble. Within the bubble, the shape of camera appears. Our hero’s eyes widen, there is a glimmer of hope. He scrambles around for his camera, and sitting upright with the cloud containing his idea clearly floating above his head, he takes a snapshot. Et Voila, the idea is clearly seen in the picture. A cry of jubilation and elation is heard from our hero. He prints the picture and pins it on to the side of his computer.

He has his idea finally and now he can start transferring the idea to the computer. He reaches for the keyboard, but hesitates. He looks up the thought bubble that is still floating above his head. In a moment of recognition, he smiles and nods at the bubble. He says a small “thanks”, and with a final wink towards the cloud, he turns back to the keyboard and starts typing. We see him look back to where the cloud should be, but sure enough, it has already gone.

With a wry smile, he turns to look at the photo on the side of his monitor, grins, and begins typing, only more furiously.

Finally our character is finished. He slumps back again in his chair looking satisfied with himself. We get to have a look over his shoulder at his work. We are presented with a self-portrait, a character with a thought bubble hanging over him, and which the screen avatar is trying to capture.

As we leave our character, we see him looking happy with himself and nodding, and without him realising, a small wisp of cloud appears over his shoulder, which leans past him, slightly cocked, seems to examine the screen, bobs, and then fades again, leaving our character still smiling ruefully.