say the word.
a small artist's name.
nope. try again.
a film by andy serkis · written by daniel floren & josh nelson youssef
> mounting aya.disk
> scanning folders…
> /port_perfect/ found
> /nevatars/ found ⚠ flagged
> loading characters…
> ready
aya's world is small and pink
and full of things she made.
stickers on everything. layers. soft fabrics. nothing she'd be embarrassed to be seen drawing on.
livestream night
green sweater · dark skirt · sneakers
studio sundays
pink sweater · blue stickers · yellow socks
going outside
denim shorts · crop sticker tee
cold morning
purple jacket · green turtleneck
taped up. layered. nothing thrown out.
self portrait · monday
just trying things
old photo · age 4
posing for marshie
don't
throw out
the messy ones ♥
tonight, she's going live.
> opening /livestream…you are in the chat. she will hear you.
a sloppy stick figure named
squiggles. she hugged it. she said,
"i love it!"
young aya · 4
my friend ♥
dad had other ideas. he had many other ideas.
a doctor…? or a lawyer…?
an artist.
engineer? accountant?
an artist.
…art history professor?
an artist!!
…an artist who makes money?
art she found online. clean. polished. nothing of hers.
everything weird, soft, sentimental, unfinished. everything that felt like her.
"impervious armor. perfect topology."
her one perfect character. her ticket out.
she meant to drop her in port perfect.
she missed.
file: hauser.chr · misfiled
hi. they've been waiting.
trace · idle
A black-and-white 2D sketch. Earnest, driven, unfinished. Aya has redrawn him a thousand times and never finished him once. He doesn't mind. He scavenges the ridge for parts to a ship he keeps insisting isn't ready.
"once we perfect the ship, we'll make the jump to port perfect… and then she'll…"
walk cycle
kooks · workshop
Wild hair. Big round goggles. Owns Kooks' Shop at the edge of town. She hovers above the ridge as a screen on a copter, telling Trace exactly which scrap pile to dig in.
"at some point, you just gotta give it a try."
kooks' shop · exterior
marshie · bouncing
Block-bodied chibi marshmallow. Magenta eyes, pink cheeks, stick arms. Anxious. Apologetic. Carries a gizmo — half scanner, half navigator. Always says "sorry…" before her sentences. Most useful person on the ship.
"sorry — left-up-down!"
turntable
farty mcfly
A sentient toilet. Water sloshes when he moves. Carries TP binoculars and a methane blowtorch. The sardonic one. The wrong one. The one who welds the plasma launcher into a rocket engine when nothing else will save the ship.
"that's a zip file…"
yarna · idle
Doe-eyed. Sweet. A little dim. Made entirely of yarn — and when she has to, she unspools. She catches Hauser mid-fall during the wild circuits chase. She is the one who says, in the dark, the line that breaks the spell.
"i always thought of you as my friends."
turntable
hauser · full body
White-and-teal armor. Pink under-cut. Cyan eyes. The one Aya spent months making. The one she meant to put in port perfect. The one who landed in a smoking crater on the wrong side of the disk.
"i don't share parts. and i don't need your ship."
That's at the start. By the end, she breaks her own plasma launcher to save the team. By the end, she shoves Trace into the spotlight. By the end, she calls them the best parts of Aya.
aya · painterly
Curly brown hair. Big brown eyes. Pink-sticker sweater. Easel by the window. She is hosting a livestream tonight and the chat — that's you — is asking for a story.
She is going to tell you about a folder she made when she was nineteen. She is going to call her old characters worthless, stupid stuff. She is going to wish, six years later, that she hadn't.
"stay beautiful and messy. we'll see you on the next one."
antivirus bot
Sleek metallic patrol bots with a hard-drive meter strapped to their chest. They scan files. They issue warnings. They delete. Red decay for normal sweeps. Inky black decay when the antivirus variant is on your tail through the wild circuits.
"file size overload. begin auto-delete."
wild circuits
color keys are the lighting and the feeling of a chapter, painted before anything is rendered. these are the seven keys that anchor the film.
Open a zip file the disk can't hold and a pop-up cracks the sky:
file size overload. reducing to 75%. begin auto-delete.
PerfeClean Bots flood the streets. Spotlight scans turn buildings into rising voxel ash. Files revert to previous auto-saves — Yarna's hair flickers through old revisions, Marshie's color cycles back through earlier passes. It is a death by editorial second-guessing. Every artist recognizes it.
do not open
it is a film you sit inside. aya streams from your living room. her chat — that's you. when the disk world opens up, it opens up around you.
"you're silly and unfinished and a little weird." "but you might be some of the best parts of aya." "and i won't let you go down without a fight."
— hauser, in the delete chasm
a film by
Andy Serkis
some art was meant to be
never shared