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A lot has happened these past few weeks, so I thought it was a good time for the July 2016 Company Update.
Bink: Hopefully everyone has already seen the first episode of Bink. Through our different publications, over 50,000 people have seen our little yellow and blue creature, so I think this is pretty good for our first animated short. I’ve never been an expert when it comes to YouTube, so before launching Bink I did a lot of research on best practices. Things like the best day of the week and time to post to get the most views, or should you post it as a Facebook video, YouTube link, or website link.
It turns out that Facebook penalizes YouTube videos and doesn’t include them in as many friends’ newsfeeds as it does its own native Facebook videos. I wanted to drive traffic to my YouTube channel, so to achieve this I ended up sharing a link to my website that had the YouTube video embedded, since website links rank higher than direct links to a YouTube link.
Many of you have been asking when the next Bink is coming and I’m still trying to figure it out. Producing one of these episodes (even 30 seconds) is quite expensive. Before committing to another episode, I need to make sure the company has the funds available to do so. I need enough client projects to generate money that I can use to fund Bink short futures. I’ll have to take a close look at my current clients’ projects and company savings to see when is the best time to produce another episode.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Bink shorts and have a lot of really fun ideas about where I can take the story. I want to explain more about who Bink is, his species, where he’s from, and how he ended up at this testing facility. Each episode will give you a little more information about Bink to eventually help you see the bigger picture. Some of my future plans for the short will also take us outside of the testing facility, and you may even meet more of his species (can you imagine how cute baby Binks would be?). Many very exciting stories that I hope to share with all of you. The animated gif of the amulet is a clue that Bink has more than you bargained for.
Bink Merchandise: A lot of people have asked me for Bink plush toys and I’ve actually started looking into them. It seems a little out of my reach right now, but as the series grows in popularity, I may be able to cover the costs of making plush toys. My brief research has shown that there are companies that make custom plush toys, but most have a minimum order of 1000 units. I’m not sure there are enough people who know Bink and can sell 1,000 plush toys to make back the money on the order.
While we don’t have any plush toys yet, I’ve added more Bink t-shirts and other products to our online store, so be sure to check them out. I ordered some test prints to see how they would print and they turned out great.
MagicMeeMees: The most important thing this week is that we were finally able to share the first episode of MagicMeeMee that we started working on in January of this year. We are currently working on 3 additional episodes, each with their own unique worlds and characters. This web series is for our client, Future of Play, which is a new toy company launching the MagicMeeMees toy line next month. Depending on how the toys sell, they may decide to make more episodes, so go out and buy the toys!
You may also notice that this web series has a very different style and quality than Bink. We were on a very tight budget with these, so we designed it in a way to keep complexity low. For example, none of the characters have hair and their design is very simplistic, there are limited reflections in the world and no special effects. We had a very talented team working on these episodes and they all did an incredible job within the budget constraints.
There were other challenges, like we needed to stay as faithful as possible to the toys and their worlds, and we had to tell a story without any dialogue or narration. We also needed to make sure to show the different functionalities of the toys, such as the glowing chests to show their emotions and their communication through buzzing/vibrations. Food is also a very important part of the toys, and you’ll see more of that in future episodes.
Here are the amazing team members who brought MagicMeeMees to life.
Jared White – Writer, storyboard artist, editor and co-director
Carlos Johnson – Composer
Linda Kurgpold – Shaper and rigger
Nico Sanghrajka – TD Character
Jim Richardson – Approximate layout
Juan Eric Domingo – Animator
Eric Deuel – Animator
Chris Mayne – Animator
Danny Clark – Animator
Benjamin Liska – Lighter and composer
Sound box post – Post-production sound services
Jeff Shiffman – sound supervisor
David Carfagno – sound editor
Jesse Drake – re-recording mixer
Eric M. Miller – Producer and co-director
Company: As you can see, we’ve been pretty busy with our different projects, so you might be wondering what’s next for the company. Now that we have some good work, I plan to update our companies’ showreel to include the work of Toys’R’Us, Bink, and MagicMeeMees. I feel this gives us a good variety of projects and styles to show clients what we can offer. I will spend most of my time contacting potential clients and trying to bring in more projects. The more client work we can do, the more the studio can grow and the more money we will have to do our own projects like Bink.
If you haven’t already, join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog. Also, if you have any ideas or tips, I’d love to hear what you have to say, so feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only time will tell.