Bridgette's Journey: A Christmas Tale

gh0stttt · 2023-12-22T01:33:01-05:00

THE STORY: "An unknown force conjured two souls for two dolls out of thin air. A panda named Peter Panda and a brown bear named Artie were both suddenly alive but with translucent bodies. They looked at their own actual, inanimate bodies on a hospital bed next to a girl they quickly recognized as their best friend. "Hi," uttered a seemingly sad humanoid resembling a generic angel as she approached the dolls from behind. "I understand that none of you can speak, so let me explain since you are able to understand my words." The bears gathered closer to the angel as she teared up at the sight of the girl in the bed. "That girl, your best friend, is named Bridgette, and she is not okay. She's been in a bus crash. She was going home from school when the brakes went out, and the bus hit a bunch of other cars," the angel explained. "She's the only survivor in the wreck." Artie, the brown bear, immediately spun towards the girl before rushing to try to shake her wrist to wake her up. May had been the bear that protected Bridgette from nightmares for all 8 years of her life. Despite the inability to move Bridgette's arm, May kept trying because she didn't want to lose her to this nightmare, the first one to set May herself on edge. The angel approached with a snow globe formed from the top of her halo. The snow globe displayed Bridgette's soul, lost and crying while curled up in a trench in the middle of what appeared to be a snowy Limbo. "I need your help," the Angel announced, regaining May's attention. "She's stuck here, in those trenches. I'm going to transport you all exactly one mile north from where she's at. It's as far as I can get you guys in an instant. Once you find her, bring her back to this room and get her to lay in this bed." Both bears nodded, and May even took a kneel to pledge her undying loyalty to Bridgette. "Before I send you, I must let you all know that she's on life support," the Angel said, pointing directly at the ventilator behind the bears on their right. "Exactly five minutes ago, her doctors told her family that they're going to pull the plug on Christmas, which..." the Angel began choking up once more. ".. is in 2 days." The bears approached the Angel to ease her pain with a group hug. "Thank you, I needed that," the Angel responded, her voice still trembly from crying. The Angel guided the bears to the edge of the bed to transport them outside. She tossed her halo over the edge, at which point it formed a golden portal mid-fall, exposing their destination through the center. "Go! I'll be right here for when you return. I'm counting on you, all of you," said the Angel. As the Angel waved goodbye, the bears connected their paws against each other as they leaped off the bed and into the portal to save their best friend in time for Christmas." ABOUT THE RENDER: The render depicts Bridgette and her bears looking up at the sky, which is displaying her parents as they cry for her to wake up. She's able to see them from where she's standing because that's what her physical eyes see in the real world, so her eyes are basically the atmosphere. This implies that closing them brings the sky back into a cloudy, freezing darkness. Due to a problem with my PC where a render bigger than a room with 2 people was causing the render to fail, I had to render both the crying parents' scene (top) and the bears & the girl's scene (bottom) as separate scenes, and piece them together in Gimp, which is where I did the editing for the glow on the halo, the blizzard, and the clouds. I also used Gimp's "Waterpixels" and "GIMPressionist" effects to give the render a bit of a painted feel.