My thesis film "PHOBOSPLUNKER" is a surreal, genre-bending animated short that fuses traditional 2D animation, motion design, and original music production. Influenced by shows like "Invader Zim", "Adventure Time", and my fascination for parasitology. The film embraces fun absurdity and grotesque humour while experimenting with visual form. My film follows Deimos, a manic spaghetti-hungry inventor, who must traverse the inside of her own mind in order to track down the source of her sudden wormy hallucinations. These horrors threaten the fabric of her mind, and her appetite. The project blurs the lines between 2D animation and motion design to create a distinct and unconventional visual identity. Rather than relying solely on digital assets, I prioritised photographing real-life textures and objects to ground the film’s bizarre story in tactile reality. From animating my actual microwave to sculpting backgrounds and the villian “Big Worm” being constructed out of Play-Doh, every element was designed not just to look interesting — but to be constructed in an interesting way. In the very early development stages of the film, I had just experienced a great grief in my personal life, and somehow this grief had lead me to obsessively research parasitology, and the visual work of Ernst Haeckel. His illustrations of the Diplozoon paradoxum—a parasitic worm that must fuse with another larva to fully form—served as the primary thematic inspiration for the film’s central conflict: fear, transformation, and the painful process of change that ultimately leads to growth. At its heart, "PHOBOSPLUNKER" is a wild ride of absurd humour and eye-popping visuals, designed to make you laugh, squirm, and come back for another watch.
