BBC Path Yorkshire

On Wednesday the 18 February 2015 at 11am me and Callum went to a BBC Digital Talent Search called: PATH Yorkshire. We had previously called the organisation for a place and revived and email back confirming our place. (I will include an sceenshot of this email in my university submission as I can not post in on the Internet, as we were asked not to forward or distribute the email). 

We had aimed to attend this to pitch Wild-Life to the BBC, but upon reading the terms and conditions of the contract of our attendance, we read that this will give the BBC to use anything we say without our permission and it would become property of the BBC. Reading this we immediately decided we will not mention Wild-Life at this event. After a brief overview though, it became apparent what the BBC were looking far were "Youtube Personalities" as that's what their market were watching more off. This is not something we had intended to apply for, so instead improvised some ideas about making mocumentaries about guinea pigs and hamsters living in student accommodation, or dressing them up and filming a comedy western, and other things along those lines. 

We were disappointed with the outcome as we had thought "BBC Digital Talent Search" meant they were searching for digitally creative people who have knowledge in the area of computer software, or ideas for new CBBC/Cebeebies animations. Either way, it was a good experience to attend and I am glad I had the opportunity to go, I only wish more information was give prior to turning up.

Links to Social Media Presence

Here are the links to our Facebook page, and our Twitter page the the Wild-Life project. We will be updating these as often as possible, so keep and eye on them as there's lots of new content to publish right around the corner!

Tumblr, Intagram, Pintrest and Linkin accounts will be created shortly!

www.facebook.com/Wild.Life.BrownTwins
twitter.com/Wild_Life_comic

Making the showreel

For our showreel, as we have specialised into comics, we thought it unnecessary to make conventional showreel, as I had already done one of these last year (see here) and only done a singular video brief since, (filming London Super Comic-Con). Therefore, doing another video showreel is not something worth doing. Instead, we decided to make an introduction to our comic, via a short animated video introducing the main characters, and scouting over the map to see where each character is from, ending with a contact information via G mail, our Facebook page and our Twitter page.

The video however, proved more difficult than anticipated. This was due to firstly After Effects simply not doing as key-framed. We would add a key-frame in, so a picture moved from point A to point B over the period of a second. But between point A and B, despite there only being two key-frames, After Effects would make the picture travel in a few loops, stutter, or move off camera to get from A to B. To counter this, we had to key-frame some images frame by frame to ensure this didn't happen and they travelled in the straight line as intended.

We also had some problems exporting the video, as the file size was 6.5GB. We loved the quality, but this was too big to fit on a disc wich is the way we have to fit in. After trying a few compression techniques via After Effects Encoder, reducing quality and some online guides, there appeared no successful way to get our video with a high quality, in 1920 x 1080 in H264. The videos would always seem to export jittery, attempting to frame blend or simply bad quality. To counter this problem, we ended up having to upload the full quality 6.5GB version to Youtube, and then re-download it, which kept the settings of HD 1920 x 1080 in H264 and reduced the file size to 101.1MB. The final video can be viewed via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHJBKYFZ5mM

The following day, we discovered a way of of reducing the file size without compromising the quality too much.  This was by instead of having a loss-less bitrate, we limited it to 50,000. We tired to limit it to 5,000, and even 10,000, but both these options still resulted in very noticeable quality reduction. So we settled with the 50,000 bitrate version, with a file size of 1.36 GB.

Peparing for End oF Year Show

This is what we hope our end of year show to look like. This includes:

Our map
A printed image of our collective image of the main characters
Multiple versions of our printed comic (hopefully about eight)
Printed images of our anatomy and expression studies
Our action figures we have built
Replica examples
The necklace we had made
Printed posters for the live action film
Enlarged pictures from the comic
Full scale cardboard cut outs of the main characters
Me and Callum, wearing the Wild-Life hoodies we had made

If we don't get this much allocated wall space, I have labeled below the order of importance of each. If we have to reduce the size of our space, 10 will go first, then 9, then 8, ect. Me and Callum, wearing the Wild-Life hoodies we had made is a must. If for some unforeseen reason neither can attend one day, the hoodies will be placed on coat hangers and hung beside each of the enlarged comic book pages.

1. A printed image of our collective image of the main characters
2. Our map
3. Multiple versions of our printed comic (hopefully about eight)
4. Our action figures we have built
5. Replica examples
6. The necklace we had made
7. Printed posters for the live action film
8. Full scale cardboard cut outs of the main characters
9. Enlarged pictures from the comic
10. Printed images of our anatomy and expression studies

Writting the 12 month plan

When starting to plan the next 12 months, me and Callum ran into difficulty. This is because we must write separate plans, despite having the same project, and what we were planning was the future of that very same project. So what we did, was together write a rough plan of what our end goals were, when they had to be achieved by, and how we were going to achieve them. This included the rough plan of the first 10 volumes, what events we would attend, and what may be on some of the main achievements, such as what will be on our website. After having a good bullet point idea of our goals, we then went away and wrote our separate 2,000 word plans.

Business Cards

Here are our business cards. These were made to the exact size give on Moo.com, and I added various backgrounds for these including different characters as I feel they are all great illustrations and interesting designs, and should a publisher or future collaborator see multiple ones it way show we worker harder than necessary (producing multiple covers) and give them a taste of more of our design work. than only one image could.

Potential companies to pitch to: Square Enix

Square Enix in another big games company that could produce a great Wild-Life game. A huge sense of Wild-Life is about how brutal, hard and wiild life can be, which the new Tomb raider showed very well. The game was exciting, beautiful and action packed with great mechanics and a great story. the comapanyy proved its ability to make a truly great game and with its assocition with the toy company Kai Arts, it makes it a great company to start a Wil-Life game. The Kai Arts figures are also highly detalied, articulated and consistantly as good as the last, making this a great toy comapny for Wild-Life. They do however tend only to make merchandise form existing francises, so it couldn't start at the toy comapny, but certainly move toward there in the future.

Potential companies to pitch to: Bethesda Game Studios

Besthesda Game Studios are best known for the Fallot and Elder Scrolls francises. If Wild-Life was to expand to a AAA game francise, Bethesda may be the ideal comapny to go to. They have shown in the Elder Scrolls Skyrim how detailed and immersive their world can be, something Wild-Life's lore could easily be as detiled as with enough thought, and their physical world could be just as detailed, though ideally Skyrim would only represent the Northern continent in size. They also already have practiced with anthropomorphic charcters in the form of the cat people. The only element I would do differently is the combat, as my only critism with the whole game is the combat, as in my opinion its very basic, slashing weapons where blades never meet until the opponant dies. In a Wild-Life video game, I would want the comabt to feel more flowing like the combat in the Assassins Creed games, and the shooting mechanic in Red Dead Redeption.

Potential companies to pitch to: Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment have a very high reputation for online multiplayer games, and for good reason. With products such as World of Warcraft, and the upcoming Overwatch, they are extremly good at producing online games and multiplayer expierences. Wild-Life I think could flurish in this, a online game where people could choose from hundreds of charcters (or a select 10-20) and then play through. Wild-Life's map is already designed and the possibilites for charcters and villians to meet are endless. A style of game such as WoW could be a great way for Wild-Life to reach a very wide audience.

Potential companies to pitch to: Rare Ltd/Playtonic Games

Another way of pitching the Wild-Life idea could be through games. A more child friendly audience would be to pitch the idea to the comapny that was Rare Ltd, some of whom have gone on to band a new company, Platonic games, to make the spiritual sequel to Rare Ltd's Banjo Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee. This is a game where the playes takes control of tw characters, one (the main character) who runs on land with a winged character that helps them travel further distances. I can very easily see a character like Bill the Platypus (which we made an animation for in 2nd year) with a wakcy parrot on his back being in a game of this style, and would further our audience with a company that have proven themselves very successful, with a Kickstater for there new game Yooka-Laylee reaching 1.6 million of their original £175,000.

Professionals I aspire to: Bryan Hitch

Byran Hitch has a very realistic style that makes his characters all look very idividual in face and physique. He is mastered expression and body language, and his work has a very cinematic feel, larlgey due to the use of angles and shading he uses. His work is vey detailed with a very good description of form, specifially noiticable in the expression of the Hulk and the muscles in his face. He also often uses key lighting to help pop the subject of the frame. His work is incredible, but something I feel I could replicate as I have much expirence in drawing in a realistic style, so all I'd have to do is ink the pencils in to achieve this style. This is something I would liek to expeirment with if not only to see how it would look.

Professionals I aspire to: Frank Miller

Frank Miller is an artist I have always wondered what it was that I liked about his work, as sometimes his drawings can look very disproportionate in the faces. In black and white I feel his work is stronger as it accentuates the use of lighting and shading which is one of the best parts of his work. However, I aslo think one of his strong elements that makes his work unique are postion, composition, page layout and angles. How Batman and Robin are drawn jumping between rooftops above the skyline shows the reader how dangerous they live and how 'super' they are for people with no powers. Even how after Elektra is stabbed and the rectagele of pink highlights the stab wound, and then to the right a long shot of her stubling feet and faling displays her weaking body. It is also shown how in Daredevil's flexibility and shots of him runing acroos the city landscape and how it becomes a part of the character.

As for my taste, I like cartoony styles but in my opinion a better colourist whould help his Batman and Daredevil work, with some more shading to style them in the way that make his Sin City work look so striking and original.

Professionals I aspire to: Jamie Tyndall

Cover aritst and Pin up illustrator Jamie Tyndall mostly illustartes female superheroes or comic heroines. For me Jamie Tyndall's art is very reminesint of J Scott Campbells, but none the less has had a long time and care taken over it, resulting in beautiful results. His original work is very imaginative, and his work on well known characters he adds immense amounds of detail, from Pioson Ivy's vines and leaves, to Deadpool's and Harley Quinn's buckles, weaponary and straps that give a highly detailed look. The beauty in his art may only appeal to a male audience, but for his target audience his work is flawless. He celebrates the female form in a somewhat exaggrated way, but he similarly does this for hair, accessories and clothing (such as Warbird/Ms Marvel's red cloth, and the Assassins Creed illustration). This combination I really like, however, it would be nice to see more of Mr Tyndall's work illustaring male characters as I believe he could do this very well, but when researching his work it is obvious he has perfected illustrating women, it would be interesting to see more work of men.

Professionals I aspire to: David Finch

David Finch is a comic artist with a similar style to Jim Lee, highly detailed and heavily shaded. I've really grown to like this style as it catures the comic book heroes pysique really well. Most of these examples diplay the muscular physiques of the superhero but the image of Hellboy below also displays how baggy clothing can drape over the broad character to make him look really strong without showing off his muscles too much. The drawings he displays are impossible, the veins and muscles popping out of wolverine to the poportions to some of his women, though I would argue David Finches women look more athletic and realistic than many other comic book artists. Either way, the point I make is that both genders are described to the extreme but it does make the art look very visualy appealing, striking and eye catching. It is a style I think works beautifully in comics and one that my work takes influence from.