Visual & Brand Design Motion Comic, Film Direction, Illustration

AQS

AQS is a motion comic that gives Pakistan's water crisis a human face: a water spirit myth rooted in Balochistan's folklore, real research, and watching my own hometown run dry.

Role

Storyteller, Illustrator, Motion Designer

Timeline

December 2020 · Capstone, Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture

Tools

Adobe Creative Suite, Procreate

Watch the Film

AQS is a motion comic exploring Pakistan's water crisis through a speculative lens. It's inspired by the ongoing water shortages and the unavailability of Sui gas in Balochistan, Pakistan.

Viewers are urged to contribute in whatever way they can towards the environment, for a better and safer future. A few organizations that help: Alkhidmat Clean Water and charity: water.

Character Design

Building Shahmir

Shahmir needed to read instantly as grounded and local, since the story asks the audience to believe a very ordinary man is the one who goes looking for a water spirit. I designed him in a traditional shalwar kameez rather than anything stylized, and kept the palette and line work simple. Part of that was a deliberate minimalist choice, and part of it was practical: this was my first time animating a character across an entire film.

Early turnaround sketches, working out Shahmir's silhouette, proportions, and face from the front and profile.

The Challenge

The hardest part was grounding a high concept, speculative narrative in reality. I grew up in Quetta and watched Hanna Lake dry up firsthand, so the story is built on real research too: interviews with Hayatullah Durrani, an environmentalist and founder of the Hayat Durrani Water Sports Academy, and Sikander Bizenjo, a development economist and Climate Reality Leader, both working on Balochistan's water crisis, plus reports from the UNDP and Pakistan's Council of Research in Water Resources. That's what let the myth carry real weight instead of just being invented.

Illustrated frame of a shrine on a hill above a dry, cracked lakebed, next to a real photograph of the same kind of shrine surrounded by parched ground — The film's central shrine, illustrated (left), next to the real drought stricken reservoir it's based on (right): this is what Shahmir actually finds when he reaches the lake.

Illustrated frame of the same shrine reflected in a full lake at night, next to a real daytime photograph of a shrine surrounded by water — The shrine as Shahmir hallucinates it, full of water. His thirst and desperation are what conjure this image, not anything he actually finds there.

Wide establishing shot of a desolate desert landscape at sunset with distant mountains — Setting the world after the war: a barren Balochistan landscape, its resources depleted and its people displaced.

Illustration of a bleached animal skull lying on cracked orange desert ground — A small environmental detail doing a lot of the storytelling: what the land looks like once the water is gone.

Process

Idea to Finished Film

Five stages carried AQS from a rough idea to a finished piece, each one feeding the next. Most of it happened during COVID, so nearly all of it, including directing the voice actor, had to be done remotely.

Research & Interviews
Interviews with local experts, UNDP & PCRWR reports
Storywriting
Shahmir's journey, the spirit world's rules
Storyboarding
Every shot and beat, before final art
Illustration & Voice Direction
Procreate, scene by scene, while directing the voice actor remotely over email
Animation
After Effects: camera, particles, light

Gallery

A selection of frames from across the film.

Close-up of Shahmir indoors, lit by window blinds, looking serious

Shahmir with hands raised to his face, surrounded by electric blue cracks of light and floating sparks

A small figure in white walking through dark blue draped, cracked folds of light, seen from above

The shrine at night, fully surrounded by rippling water, glowing faintly, reflected below

A tiny silhouetted figure stands before a glowing orb cradled by four dark, tentacle-like forms, under an aurora-lit sky

Identity

The Mark

The logo needed a local touch, so I experimented with Urdu type and circular forms until I found a shape that could carry the story's themes on its own. It leans on circles to represent both the water cycle and the broader cycle of life, a quiet echo of the word the whole project is named for: “Aqs” means reflection.

Starting from the Urdu script for “Aqs,” then working the circular wave motif by hand.

The final spiral, built on a precise ring construction so it could animate cleanly.

Palette

Pulled straight from the film itself: the spirit world's cyan glow, the deep navy of its night skies, and the sun bleached ochre and bone of the drought stricken land.

Reflection Cyan

#82F4FE

Spirit Navy

#0F2038

Drought Ochre

#6E4220

Bone Sand

#E2C19E

Line Ink

#16151D

Key Takeaways

As a capstone project, AQS set out to show that motion graphics, film direction, and design research together can shift perspective. It's proof that design can be advocacy, not just decoration.

I researched Pakistan's water crisis in depth and learned about local folklore, then highlighted it in the story so the film felt rooted in place.
I taught myself to animate in After Effects.
I sourced resources during COVID, which pushed me to work with what was available.
Making the narrative both researched and felt was always the real goal, more than any single frame of it.

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