Team Salmon #2: Iris

This year I shared seven ideas I have for very distant TAPAS productions, most of them in the medium of animation - "Team Salmon" being the hypothetical animation division of TAPAS. The official additions to the blog will, effectively, be the third draft of these presentations, the most current and up-to-date version of the stories that exist right now. The September 2018 version for the historical record.

IRIS

This story has gone through a lot of permutations, especially recently. The original goal was to create an original story which could be used to repurpose all the ideas from the Maximum Ride fanfiction I wrote when I was in my late teens. The biggest stroke that came in setting it apart from Maximum Ride was to take it away from a modern setting and into what I call a "post-post-apocalyptic" world; the world as we know it is gone, but the human race has bounced back and become something new over thousands of years.

Iris was the story most influenced by Rooster Teeth Animation, which I discovered last year and inspired the grouping of all of these ideas under the Team Salmon banner. I figured Iris would be a successor to RWBY, a CGI anime where every weapon is also a gun. But then I saw the film Fire and Ice, a 1983 animated film by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta inspired by the works of Robert E. Howard, and I really wanted to create something inspired by that kind of barbarian genre, and I realized it would actually fit in really well with Iris to make it unique - there'd be no need to make a successor to RWBY, which already exists; everyone who wants to break into web animation from now on will do it with a successor to RWBY. So now, through many disparate influences, I really had something different.

Then, just a few days ago, I discovered there was a Maximum Ride movie released two years ago. I immediately dropped everything to watch it, and while it wasn't a very good film, I loved it anyway. It reminded me of my passion for one of my first truly life-changing artistic influences, so... now I'm committed to bringing some of the Maximum Ride atmosphere that I'd taken out of Iris and putting it back in. And so we have come full circle.

The Style

Rotoscoping. See, traditional animation is all but dead, probably because of the time and effort required, but rotoscoping has always been said to be much cheaper. It seems a bit counterintuitive to me that filming a scene and then animating it is cheaper than animating it freehand, but that's been common animation wisdom since the 1930s, so I'll take their word for it. Maybe rotoscoping Iris could be just as easy as flash-animating it! Or maybe, despite being inspired by Fire and Ice, it'll end up looking more like He-Man, but that's okay, that's a solid influence too. Gritty 80s rotoscoped animation is the atmosphere we're going for.

The First Episode

Iris sleeps, seemingly an ordinary girl in an ordinary bed. She tosses and turns, having a nightmare about being experimented upon in a Victorian-era-looking steampunk lab, having her hearing and vision tested with unnecessary pain. She wakes up, and finds that she's in a strange dungeon-like room with a mysterious light source. Not recognizing her surroundings, she searches for a way out.

In the tunnel-like hallways outside the room, Iris runs into Doc Morgana, who wears the same long white robe as the people who were experimenting on her. He tries to calm her and explains to her that she is no longer at Longsaddle University, a notion she can barely process. He invites her on a tour of the facility: outside the tunnel is an amazing cavern of reddish stone, crossed by many walkways, lit by sunlight from many openings in the cavern's roof, with water below filled with fish and other life; people are bustling all around. Doc explains that they're called Gaia, and that they are a secret organization out to save the world. Iris takes in none of this, only seeing the sun; she spreads her huge bat wings and attempts to fly away, but is stopped by the call of a familiar voice, that of Alton.

Calmed by the sight and sound of her friend, Iris halts her escape attempt. Now that she's pacified, she starts to actually process what she's been told. She's approached by Marty, the elderly wheelchair-bound cyborg who leads Gaia. He explains that Longsaddle and Gaia are enemies, but managed to work out the exchange of a large sum of money for the five mutant teens; down below, Lydia is speaking before a crowd of Gaia members, explaining the powers and abilities of Raquelle, Sequoia, and Meggi as the trio demonstrate.

Iris wants to know what the teens owe Gaia, and Marty hastily assures her that it's nothing at all; they are free now, and permitted to live in the Gaia base or be protected wherever else they'd like to go. While four of them happily accept this, Iris doesn't seem to buy it. More details about the facility are revealed; most prominently Antonio and the rest of the security team, raising the question of how exactly Gaia goes about saving the world; and Tina, the alien who has supplied Gaia with the technology that powers their base.

A private conversation between Doc and Marty reveals that the two have different perspectives: it was Doc who orchestrated the purchase of the teens from Longsaddle, and is very eager to employ them to Gaia's advantage; Marty, however, went through with it out of the goodness of his heart, and reminds Doc that the teens have every right to refuse to work for them, and he doesn't want to spring the notion on them too early.

A slip of the tongue from Lydia reveals to Iris that certain people expect the teens to fight on Gaia's behalf. Her suspicions confirmed, Iris takes to the sky again, finding that the base is beneath the ground in the midst of a massive, barren desert. In despair, she tries to kill herself by flying as high as she can then going into an uncontrolled dive; but Alton, his own wings unseen up to this point, flies up and saves her, bringing her to one of the lone trees dotting the landscape. Iris has made up her mind that this new situation is not an improvement over their old one, but submits to Alton when he pleads with her to give it a try.

The Setting

The central setting is the snazzy base built into the desert cave system, as previously described. Little by little, details of the post-post-apocalyptic setting are revealed. While it initially seems to be a constructed world with real-world parallels, it turns out to be Earth in the year 7099, exactly 5000 years after an apocalypse wiped out much of humanity and changed the world's geography. Primarily this just means that every continent except Africa is now smaller, but there are a few other eerie details such as the fact that the Mediterranean is now a desert instead of a sea, and that no place that gets visited is really recognizable as Earth, all landscapes being spectacular and somewhat alien.

There are a handful of countries in the world, I've been working on constructing them and their histories; no two nations border one another, it's just a planet full of no-man's-land dotted with occasional small countries. Most places have a Stone Age aesthetic, but it's strikingly inconsistent, with societal and technological levels varying from place to place, from the Stone Age to the Cold War, with occasional glimmers of purely science-fiction elements like laser guns and hovercrafts. Fashion is very Stone Age.

Gaia's mission is one of peace and justice, and they regularly send people out into the world on behalf of that mission. Themes of the story include depression, growing up, and societal justice.

The Characters

The series starts with ten main heroes. Ultimately, it'll be a massive cast where people regularly join up, leave, or are killed off. There's also a substantial rogues gallery. For the purposes of the cast list, let's focus on the ten main heroes:

The Eyes of Gaia
The five mutated teenagers purchased from Longsaddle University by Gaia. Each an animal hybrid, the group were born and raised in Longsaddle's laboratories. Gaia offers the teens as much freedom as they can possibly give, while also inviting them to become the Eyes of Gaia, the face, and elite strike force, of their cause.

Iris: Our protagonist, a 17-year-old girl. Her animal hybrid is a bat; she can fly, provided enough space for her enormous wings, has bat ears the size of her head that don't miss any sound, and most of her body is covered in thin brown fuzz. She has brown hair, short but thick and sometimes used to hide her ears, and large black eyes. She generally wears the slave-like outfit that the Eyes wore as lab subjects. Due to being the oldest of the experiments and having been alone longer, Iris is the most psychologically damaged, suffering from depression, bipolar disorder, and a tendency towards addiction. Deeply cynical, with no love for the world or faith in humanity, she is initially completely against joining the organization, and when persuaded she does it only for the adrenaline rush and sense of accomplishment rather than any feeling that she's doing the right thing. Due to her depression, any character development she undergoes tends to be undone by the slightest snag. Despite this, she's valued as a fighter and leader due to her logical and perceptive cynicism. She generally fights only with knives, not allowing herself any long-range capabilities due to her thrill-seeking and disregard for her own safety.

Alton: A 15-year-old boy with owl DNA. He can fly silently on his great gray wings and see in great detail even in the dark. A gray-haired, yellow-eyed pretty boy, he has a muscular, feathered body. He dresses in tight-fitting, dark clothing, and often goes shirtless to make the use of his wings easy. He is the only person who can reason with Iris, and deal with her with unlimited patience and understanding. He comforts her, caters to her, and she occasionally seduces him. As good as he is for her, the fact that he has no interests outside of Iris speaks to his own psychological issues. He backs her up in combat, using a high-tech crossbow of his own design.

Raquelle: A 14-year-old girl with polar bear DNA. She is incredibly powerful, able to lift immense weight, kill with a single punch, and shrug off any hand-to-hand blow. A curvy blue-eyed blonde, she wears goth attire and makeup. Her fingers end in black claws, and she's coated in white body hair. Raquelle is snarky and irreverent with confidence and swagger, seemingly unbothered by the group's lab-experiment past or the battles of the present, but grows fiery and dangerous when things get personal. As part of her overconfidence, she fights with an electrified whip and a handheld railgun rather than anything that would benefit from her strength.

Sequoia: A 14-year-old boy with wolf DNA. He can run for hours at very high speeds and can compete with Raquelle for keenness of hearing and scent. He has a dark complexion of an unclear ethnicity, with long black hair tinged with the silver and brown wolf fur that covers his body, sharp ears, and prominent teeth. His clothing sense is best described as nondescript. He's a hard guy to read, saying very little and wanting very little. He is insightful and will speak up if he spots something that no one else has, and is prone to huge expressions of sincere gratitude. He has a well-hidden whimsical side, enjoying simple toys and games. His weapon of choice is a death ray disguised as a yo-yo.

Meggi: A 13-year-old girl with swordfish DNA. The only one of the five without significantly heightened senses, but she can breathe underwater for several hours, can swim at immense speeds, and as a natural extension is quite strong, fast, and can jump high. A gorgeous green-eyed redhead with wild curly hair, her hands and feet are finned, she has a prominent dorsal fin, and much of her body is covered in blue and white scales. She dresses like she's attending a beach party. A ditzy valley girl who'd spend all her time at a mall if one was available, she hides her pain behind excessive cheer. Befitting her nautical theme, she fights with a trident that occasionally shoots laser beams.

Gaia

Marty Hedrick: Gaia's founder and leader. A brilliant scientist who has a history with most of the evil organizations in the series, he's started his own organization in the hopes of finally doing some good. Following a near-fatal accident in his past, he's a cyborg, though not an especially cool one: only his eyes, jaw, and chest are mechanical, while his arms and legs are still biological and barely work. His withered body resides in a high-tech wheelchair, and he has a full head of long white hair. A distant and mysterious mentor, he's as alive and brilliant as ever, looking remarkably well-preserved for a guy nearly 200 years old; indeed, one gets the sense that he's likely to go down in a blaze of glory.

Doc Morgana: A scientist whose position in Gaia is prominent but unclear. A middle-aged bearded man who wears a white robe, Doc orchestrated the deal to acquire the Eyes of Gaia from Longsaddle. He is able to organize many such deals and offers small advice on every caper the group has. He's willing to resort to underhanded strategies in achieving the group's goals, and eventually seems to display a talent for manipulating Gaia's own members.

Lydia Thom: A therapist who attends to Gaia's members. A young bespectacled woman with black hair and an English accent. Lydia is only 22 years old but has several advanced degrees and is possessed of extreme intelligence and empathy, making her one of the most valued members of Gaia, keeping them all sane even as her own vulnerabilities begin to build up.

Tina Six: An elf-like extraterrestrial, real name Micanevtina Sixavae; an attractive green-skinned woman with bushy brown hair, four all-black eyes, three-fingered hands, and clawed feet better suited for living in trees than on the ground. Her expertise supplies Gaia with technology more advanced than what's available in the rest of the world, and she's a gateway to the cosmic side of the setting: there are very few planets in the galaxy with life, but all of them have an interest in Earth. Devoutly religious, Tina values humans more than her own kind and believes them to be the one civilization in the galaxy with the true potential for good.

Antonio Fratelli: Gaia's chief of security. Distinguished from Gaia's other faceless goons with guns by his more colorful armor, he gradually starts to come out of his shell, revealing long blond hair and a very nurturing, almost motherly personality. He's a former soldier who sought out Gaia membership on his own terms, rather than being recruited at a low point as most members were. This makes him much more well-adjusted than the rest of the membership, and more down-to-earth and relatable than the huge intellects that make up the rest of the leadership. A master of effective tactics, espionage, and teaching others to fight, Antonio is always the first out in the field, armed with a laser rifle and combat knife.

The Further Story

While the particulars have been stripped away by different characters and a very different setting, the first two volumes are meant to parallel the story beats of approximately the first trilogy of the Maximum Ride series, while the third and fourth volumes slightly more faithfully retell the events of my aforementioned Maximum Ride fanfiction. After that, well, I have a feeling there's a lot more Iris to tell. Each "volume" is likely to be multiple seasons.

Volume 1: This volume starts off largely character-driven, introducing us to Gaia's inner workings and the state of the world. Iris and her peers remain largely uninvolved in the early plots, merely being given exposition and shaping themselves into people defined by more than their traumatic past. Another main purpose is to establish a rogues gallery: criminals, aliens, mad scientists, politicians, and finally, the proper introduction to Longsaddle University, who have come to regret their decision to sell the teens and desperately want them back for use as engines of destruction. To this end, they've conscripted Moira, a wolverine hybrid who had a strained relationship with Iris back when they were both captive and now loathes her deeply. With the addition of this personal reason to fight, Iris finally agrees to form the Eyes of Gaia and appear on the front lines of Gaia's battles.

Volume 2: The battle between Gaia and Longsaddle escalates to all-out street warfare. Mysticism begins to become prominent, in the form of ancient practitioners of magic who preserved human knowledge for 5000 years, and aliens powerful enough to be gods. Gaia, and the Eyes in particular, become folk heroes, and amass more allies and enemies all over the world. The volume peaks in a huge, tragic climactic battle, with everything at stake and many lives lost, but it all ends with the Eyes fully in the public eye, being applauded by the entire world.

Volume 3: Their celebrity status opens up the Eyes to a new path in life, and they find themselves in an entirely new world of making public appearances, selling merchandise, and getting a formal education. For the first time, the Eyes deal with the mundane dramas of life, which they find more difficult than fighting evil ever was. And even while they've defeated Longsaddle, there are many enemies both old and new who continue to turn up, most prominently a gang of mutant monstrosities forcibly trying to recruit the Eyes into their ranks, and Jewel, a ruby-encrusted robot whose motives fluctuate from moment to moment.

Volume 4: A time-skip of several years has placed each member of the Eyes in a different place. With Jewel seeking to cull the human population, allegedly to conserve resources but mostly because he enjoys formulating the most evil schemes possible, they decide it's time to find their way back to each other, making their way through a world now ravaged by war.

Beyond: Well, heck, I barely know what happens in the four volumes I've actually planned, much less what happens afterward. It's all rather intricate and reliant on small details that would be tedious to explain here. Ultimately, the whole series is all about seeing how it shapes Iris and her friends; events are secondary.