Name ideas

Superhero names

So far we have been calling our fursuits Reskell and Fish, simply because that the name of the characters.

However they need to have their names changed for the sake of this superhero video, So I need to have a brainstorm of different name ideas.

Most superhero names are derived from either an animal or a adjective before the name of their sex (either woman or man). Like Wonder Woman, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, ect.

However there are some superhero’s that just have their names described after their personality with no reference to their gender for example The Hulk.

The thing each of these names have in common is in reference to their power whish is another thing I have yet not decided, my original idea was to have Reskell as super strength and Fish as flight.

So ideas for Fishes’ new name:

Wolfywings

Pawedflight

Lupinefeathers

Idea’s for Reskell’s new name:

The Beast

The Furry Hulk

Pawpound

WonderWolf

Music

Originally the music I was going to use for this peice was "Forever Yours" by Alex Day, however I have now decided to use game music like Smosh do in the back of their videos, like sort of simple tunes that are very computerised
Like the Pokemon Ruby music for example: http://youtu.be/Hx7-4ZnB66w

Superhero Costume Research

Personally I would say most of my research costume wise has been from Superman (above) with the chest embolistaion and the idea of a red cape, however I have used Orange and Blue for my colours rather than Red and blue. I did this partly because Orange is not a primary colour which is what usually superhero's have, I did this to try and be different from the generic superhero and think outside the box.

My costume is more taken from the costumes used in the Forever Yours video (above) which uses orange and blue and has the chest embolisation, and me like other superhero's have something to cover their face to hide their identity (like Alex above)

This is also shown well in the case of the Incredables, who all wear the generic face mask, i also like the incredibles film because they do something apart from the generic superhero movie, they show how superhero's can not be a good thing and the stigma that is attached to it, which is simmilar to the stigma attached to Fursuiting as some people see it as pedophillic.

Fursuiting Videos

http://youtu.be/z0-QGffyNpQ
This is a video of Charlotte in her fursuit (as you havent seen it yet), asfter watching this I was reminded of the fa ct that the whole point of furuits is to make people smile, the general theme of fursuiting is to communicate with actions rather than words, like if a child is scard of you you cover youre eyes pretending to be scared of them. It also reminds me that Fursuiters are brillaint instreuments of rinteracting with props and making something that was boring suddely funny and interesting, the idea is to be very energetic and to constantly be doing something. This also tells me that the transitions between scnes in editing should be very quicks because if a fursuiter appears to be slow they become boring, you need to be animated all the time.
http://youtu.be/xag0comVSv0
This is a video of Charlotte and Vicky together fursuiting. This has helped me to realise that its impotant for fursuiters if their together to interact with each other, this has caused me to want to slightly rethink my plan as their isont an awful lot of interaction between me and Charlotte scripted.

Fursuit development

After carefull consideration we have decided not to put in the cheeks led's because they stuck out of the furuit on the inside and were irritataing, and also when you had the LED's on because they were so close to the eyes all you saw was white light.
So far on the furuit the ping pong balls have been attached to the antennua LED's and they are going to be painted purple and the casing will be painted black. The bottom half of the jaw and around the eyes has been furred and shaved down, The other peices of the suit have been sut and are being shaved and stuck down within the next few days, while the sticking is going on the sweing of the paws will take place, which is where you measure youre finger and make two peices of identical size and swe them together, you only make 4 fingers because wolves only have four but you have two fingers in one of them. You can either have the two fingers being the middle and index finger or the middle and fourth finger, we decided on the fourth and middle fingers as their is more grip available and is more comofrtbale to wear.
After that we move onto the tail which is very simmilar to the fingers as in two peices of identical sizes sewn together leaving a small gap to stuff with teddy bear stuffing (helpfully gained from our dogs ripping up toys, kudos to them). Then you sew the tail onto a fabric belt and well tie the fabric belt around you waist (hidden under clothes) and there you go, Partial fursuit.
For the feet you get a normal pair of shoes add foam to make the toes and put a sheet of plastic along the bottom and fur.
In other developments we have decided instead of making hand paws and then arms, were just going to make them together, because with them seperatly you can sometimes see the hand underneath.

Flash cards

These are the remade flash cards we will use for the making of the film,
They needed remaking as most of them we arent using anymore and last time it was written in red pen

Storyboard

Here is my first storyboard to date, on Friday we hope to start filming and try and get at least het part 1 of this storyboard done, however theirs still a few things to iron out before then like deciding which powers Reskell and Poke actually have, or which they choose out of the checklist as I havent decided yet, theirs also the matter of remaking the signs with the script on, which I will start next lesson

Sketches

This is the first draft of Reskell's costume

This is a sketch of hopefully how the fursuit will look with the outfit
After drawing this sketch I realised it would be benaficial to make the cape shorter as it would get in the way and that the cost of materials would be higher, so I then did anouther sketch of the upadates Reskell's costume:

Which is the second draft od Reskell's costume, I am not making a design for Poke's costume because she wont have arms so her costume is more limited so we will probabaly just use what we can

What is a Parody ?

I thought it would be a good idea to reasearch into what a parody actually is so I know if im going in the right direction with my work:

Wikipedia definition:
"A parody ( /ˈpærədi/; also called pastiche, spoof, send-up or lampoon), in current use, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, "parody … is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."^[1] Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music (although "parody" in music has an earlier, somewhat different meaning than for other art forms), animation, gaming and film.
The writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche ("a composition in another artist's manner, without satirical intent") and burlesque (which "fools around with the material of high literature and adapts it to low ends").<sup>[2]"

After reading this I have concluded that I am making a parody because I am taking the original work of superheroes and making a humerous and ironic imitataion. This also helps me dientify my purpose as being for humour and that my target audeince has a larger range, the adults will get the puns about superheroes and the children will laugh at the falling over and general hilarity of it, a bit like when a clown perfroms.</sup>

Spoof Improvement notes:

Spoof like jokes:
"Ill Avenge You"
Kryptonite
"Im not stupid enough to looklike the thing im afarid of"
Power's Chcklist:
Invisablitiy (walking into each other)
Reading peoples thoughts (nyan cat)
Super Speed (runs into tree)

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The idea of the powers checklist is taken from the smosh video
Im adding these in too make it more spoof/parody like

The Villan (Larry)

This is Larry our villan, the idea of giving the villan muscles is to contrast with the typical idea of  the superheroes having the muscles and the villan just having a large workforce.

However we keptwith the idea of  him being dressed in black as we associate black with being evil dead and cold.

We called him Larry because people find it humeroues that he has a normal name,and the fact that the name isont widely used.

Wehave changed Larry from out first draft, now his top hat is lopsided and he has a black shirt and dark grey shorts as we haddont decided upon colours before.

Plan 2

2nd Plan:
Resk + Poke walking along
Walk into each other, flash turn into dogs
Stand around confused
Walk along and find costumes,spin till they appear on them
Villan appears
Villan talks about them being superheros
Checklist of different powers to defeat him (parody like, smosh)
Run after him
Poke get caught in ropes "Ill avenge you"
Resk has fight with Villan
'Pow' appears when Resk kicks
Villan brings out Kryptonite
Reskell bats away
Villan tries to strike back
Cut to Poke and Resk tea break (villan in background fighting air)
Villan storms over
Resk fight Villan (punch to face with pow)
Poke untangle self
Poke use power
Resk use power
Resk get knocked over by villan
Poke and Villan fight
Resk shoot villan with squeeky guns
Villan dies
Resk and Poke high five
Fly away
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Not an awful lot has changed with this plan, its just been simplified and shortened, this leaves us the option that after more consideration and research we can add more in which is better than taking things away.

Spoof research

This is anouther spoof by two video creators Smosh (warning of strong and offensive language) http://youtu.be/kz45c3vNuIs Most of this is very offensive and we couldont put into our film, however I do like the idea of trying to climb a wall like spiderman and failing.
The video also heavily refers to the fact of the sexualisation of women as superheros (see superwoman in this video)
This video (much less offesnive) http://youtu.be/woMQRKuIB48 I like the idea of both of the superdogs testing out different powers and deciding which they like the best, maybe as a choosing which way best to fight the villan.

Superhero history notes

Superheroes were invented in the late 1930’sat the time of the Second World War to give children a role model, a super power who would take down the evil and save people. The idea of a superhero was originally devised by America who was emerging as a superpower at the time. 

Superheroes were originally designed as role models for children like Superman for example.

However through time super heroes have developed and have branched out, for example batman movies in this modern era are very dark like a horror movie and is not for children.

Generally superheroes started out as men who were very large and looked like a ‘supersolider’.

However nowadays there are many female superheroes such as wonder woman and catwoman, along with other female enemies such as poison ivy, woman are always shows as sex symbols in superhero movies/comics. This helps to show how children have matured and changed since the 1930’s.

When a superhero has an animal in front of its name its usually an animal we synoimines with fear and danger such as a bat or spider, and showing them through superheroes shows how the animal in question isn’t scary and can be used for good.

Fursuit development w/ sketches

Since my last post there has been a lot of development upon my fursuit, I have added padding to the cheeks and nose and have duct taped the show head, we need to do this to then remove the duct tape so we have almost a blue print of the whole head, this was we can cut the fur to the right sizes especially when it comes to physcific markings. Below I include a plan of my fursuit including markings and its parts. Each partial fursuit contains a head hand paws arms (optional) feet and a tail, so far we are only working upon the head then we will make hand paws then arms then tail then finally feet. After this we have sewn up on ear, we did this by using the duct tape template and cutting the fur to the right size, we made one side of the ear and then sewed them together, but not all the way, at the moment it’s not attached because you make each part of the fur, like a jigsaw before you hot glue it to make sure everything fits together and its in the right place. We have decided to put the LED wires over the foam base but underneath the fur, we did this because it was very uncomfortable inside with lots of wires their and its just easier to have them in one place. We will put the battery required for the 4 LED’s (two in the cheek two in the antenna) inside the cheek; we will cut into the padding and make a sort of pocket. To improve breathing conditions we have cut the jaw in a way that there is space on the sides to breathe as well as air coming in from the front; however this makes the fursuit look less realistic and slightly out of proportion but having a good airflow is better to stop feinting and know not breathing.

                                                       Sketch of Fursuit parts

 Now because were also doing superheroes we need superhero costumes, this is probably where the most development is going to come in, as we need something that will fit around the fursuit but wont swamp it and it’s a difficult balance. So below I include the first draft of my costume, very simple but I have a feeling it will change. I get the influence from the SD on the chest from Superman and the forever yours video where Alex has “AD” on his chest, he also has a cape so this costume is very much based of him, however I have a feeling I will change it more to fit in with each superpower we will have. On Charlotte’s fursuit front she is hoping to make feet soon, she has added the foam needed to make the toes and now just needs to fur the feet. I will be making a video of almost the whole process of making the fursuit (I have a few of making the foam base) and I will try to make as many during furring as I can however I am allergic to fur so I have to do it as a slow process or it can be very irritating. To combat this process you eventually shave the fur (because at the moment its very long) and this gives it a more smooth appeal and looks generally better however this also depends upon the character, as some are fluffier than others and some fursuit are of other creatures such as lizards so they have to be shaved much more as Lizards are generally not furry.

Superhero spoofs

Superhero spoofs:

Spoof is the idea of making some sort of medium based upon another stimulus and in lamans terms taking the mick out of it. Spoofs manipulate certain parts of a stimulus to make it humerous, scenes may be changed but it is still recognisable as the stimulus. You can be as homed in as humourising a certain scene of a stimulus or you can be as broad as spoofing superheroes in general.

HISHE (How It Should Have Ended) is a team of animators and voice actors who spoof superhero movies, for example this is the animated spoof of Captain America: http://youtu.be/ruMO9SXto0Q

I really like the idea of doing spoofs because their very fun to do and helps to communicate with more audiences as children will enjoy the hilarity of the general situtaion and adults will enjoy the actual spoofing of the movies. Whereas if you show a bog standard superhero film it appeals more to children, however if you dark superhero like batman it’s not really suitable for children so this way you can communicate to more audiences.

Apart from spoofing phesific movies you can spoof superheroes in general such as the forever yours music video by artist Alex Day which is spoofing superheroes in general. http://youtu.be/qOW2eEz9cYk it conforms to all the conventions of superheroes, the good defeating the evil (like the good of Britain and America defeating the badness of the Nazis, which is the reason for the popularity of superheroes). The idea of primary contrasting colours for the outfit, the face mask obscuring the identity of the superhero because the superhero is their alter ego and they need to hide their true identity. The idea of saving people (generally women in distress) and the idea of defeating a villain with no blood or death to give people a role model and to not encourage violence.

I also like the idea that in this video the popping up captions like’pow’ and exclamation mark being shown that they are on cardboard is making the video hilarious because its showing that the captions aren’t real and the shoddiness of the whole video is generally what spoofs do. I really like the idea of this and imgoing to take a lot of inspiriation form this video.Im alsogoing to look into other spoofs, especially in the music video style and take inspiration from that because that is what I want to do.