Comic Books!

After our first production meeting with the crew, DOP Azul Serra brought up the idea of perhaps showing the characters previous history through comic books that we could show as part of our campaign. This was as the film has a certain comic book elements, both in the narrative and how these surreal characters exist in a very real world.

So after that meeting, I started touting around for an illustrator who would be willing to collaborate with us. After posting on a few forums and sending to a few colleges and universities, I got a very positive response from a comic book artist from Cleveland College of Art and Design (http://www.ccad.ac.uk/) who is known online as Phoenix Ryte. He sent me a link to some of his material (http://phenixryte23.deviantart.com/) and from there we started thinking of ideas and styles that would fit the film and comic book.

The back story idea we came up with was that Bonzo appeared at Mr. Fernelli's school, and the young magician was not too taken with the obvious and as he saw, dated humour of the clown and attempts to embarrass him. The after leaving school and setting on his own path as a magician, can't find any work so if forced to form a duo with Bonzo, the straight man to the clown. We then see a third scenario in which the ambitious Fernelli starts to plot Bonzos downfall.

It was interesting putting this together, as I hadn't given much thought to their back stories as I liked the ambiguity of it, but what doing this has done has given us a firm rooting of the characters, knowing a bit more about their motivations and where they have come from and to, and will be interesting to flesh this out not only with the unique comic books we are creating for our IndieGoGo backers but also in the audition process with the actors.

As you can see from the designs, we have used the colour pallette and designs based on our stills shoot, but the characters are not exactly the same. Bonzo's hair is more red than orange (to show thats where Fernelli gets his idea from) and Fernelli is also more the traditional magician, before he takes on the aspect of clownishness into his act and starts to take Bonzo's audience.

Having finalised the character designs we are now working on having the comics finished in the next few weeks.