Ricardo Bessa

0:05[Applause]

0:13good evening everyone that was a really nice scene true but I'm just gonna introduce myself again my name is Ricardo besa I am an illustrator from Portugal being in London for about nine years.

0:27Now I am here to talk to you about this project that I worked on for the end of the world I'm gonna be swearing a lot while I talk about this I'm very sorry but this was an ad campaign for the second season the channel for creative agency for creative and picnic studios were also obviously involved as was I and yeah.

0:55So for those of you haven't seen the show the show is about a couple of teenagers a very troubled teenagers who at first run off together and they're sort of roadtrip sort of becomes they end up running from the police and the season one ends in on a cliffhanger where they're at the beach and James is being chased by the police and then the screen cuts to black and you hear a shot for season 2 channel 4 wanted to ask the fans they came up with this campaign to ask the fans for their theories about what was going to happen or axis on season 2 and they picked a few of those theories and they turn them into these shorts animation / moving comics obviously this ended up being a Lanham ations I this was a whole team of people working on this campaign for quite a while and I just want you know I'm here as the illustrator but I just want to wanted to show you these making our videos very very quick one that was produced by the Technic studio of the animation studio that worked on it but why did they think that I was a writer illustrator well let's find out.

2:31So this was this is one of my illustrations that was shown to me when they first asked me if I was interested in working on the project. Basically they said it captured what they wanted to the animations to look like they wanted to have these sort of colors is sort of like fantasy and sci-fi thing as an illustrator that's something.

3:00That's always being my my inspiration growing up I loved video games I love comics Japanese animation. And I think that all informs the way my work looks and I think they really wanted that sort of look if I had to label my work I would say that I sort of do a lot of three things I do a lot of gay stuff I do a lot of fantasy stuff and this is actually my dungeon dragons group because of course I play Dungeons and Dragons and I do gay fantasy stuff this was actually for Smirnoff pride campaign and this was one of these images in that campaign to the social media campaign and did this catch they were like great and I was like wonderful and it was really fun this sort of the way that I work has actually allowed me to do some really cool stuff like I've worked for things such as Power Rangers which six year old me would have been so excited about and did some stuff for Game of Thrones as well for a couple of animations that were on the blu-rays and that's really cool when you get to work in these properties that you. Actually really like that's amazing but what's also really great is when you're actually brought onto projects that don't necessarily have anything to do with fantasy or sci-fi or this kind of nerdy stuff but because I'm giving that freedom I make them into fantasy and nerdy stuff like for instance that one was for a comic convention thought-bubble they just wanted a child with the book something that appealed to that kind of stuff they didn't ask for a group of adventures but that was my input and again for a clip studio paint software drawing software and again they didn't ask for a bunch of which is flying through the sky that was just me and they liked it so you know lucky me the thing is with all of the way that I work you may be wondering why this fit into the the actual project because the series is actually based on it's based on comics but those comics don't look anything like my work the artist and writer Charles Forsman is a very different style but well they still wanted that sort of in the comic kind of sensibility and as it turns out the theories were completely bonkers which is why they thought my style yet these were the first two images that I worked on for the pitch they were actually again as team effort these were actually storyboarded by tan at picnics to do very important to credit and he made my life so much easier doing the whole project.

6:01But the whole concept of these animations for channel 4 were that we the animations would start in the actual scene from the ends of the show.

6:14And then real this removing real image film the image would transition into this animation so for the intro of each animation week and wanted a real world look and then for the actual crazy theory that you were long into you wanted a different look a more colorful more vibrant look and these were actually the images that I ended up taking inspiration from this one as the images that I was told would be a really good sort of tone that they were going for and that one actually from that last episode when they're at the beach and it's just like really gray and the Sun hasn't come up yet that's sort of the look that I was going for and yet this ended up being the peach images that I first hit for the project.

7:05And then we not going with the rest of the project so going from that.

7:10So we knew that we wanted the animations to be to have this sort of real-world turns into these crazy theory thing we ended up doing a animations for eight different theories and something that I think everyone really wanted and I immediately thought of was I wanted each animation to look different from all the others I wanted each of them to have different color schemes and different look I wish I could tell you that I actually planned this I just did this for the keynote I actually when I started working on each animation I just went like okay what color combination haven't I done yet okay this is gonna probably look good which is just like the messy way that I usually work when it comes to color but hopefully it works I I think it did but yeah I basically ended up doing this sort of spread for you know just to show you guys the different looks of each animation.

8:12And this was the general color palette for the real world sort of intros with this sort of muted blues muted grayish things for the sand that kind of stuff so I'm only going to show you a couple of the animations because I don't have enough time to show you all of them this was one of my favorite ones I think it was James discharge gun and that's what we hear at the end of season one but did she with the police James is attacked by something in the sand like a massive sunroom that jumps up and swallows him whole Alyssa P in the batter she is who runs the rescue the sword she'll jump on the Sun woman Bambi she'll hold on to the Beast as it zooms through the sand and so eventually James's POW in the middle of the desert but maybe surrounded by even more some worms see what really happens the end of the world series 2 premieres 4th of November on channel 4 also stream on all four so that didn't happen in season two I don't think but this was the caliber of theory that we were working with so as you can imagine it was just really fun it was just like I could do pretty much what I wanted in many ways but yeah again I feel like a lot of the stuff that informs my work came into play for these because as I was drawing these I may have been thinking of these purple worms from Dungeons and Dragons again when I designed those those those worms and I may have looked at links or from Legend of Zelda when I was drawing her swords all that stuff came into play and I think kind of shows this whole tremors vibes kind of thing yeah it was just like super fun to work on. And this was second one this may be my favorite one from the hole so my theory is that series one ended with James getting shot alyssa is captured by Terry in unison who by the way are finca aliens they drag her on board the mothership kicking him fighting not James I refused to believe he just died so I reckon he wakes up from the dead with some crazy abilities while Lissa is being tested on James burst through the ship using his new powers and fights the aliens so they can escape see what really happens the end of the world series 2 premieres 4th of November on channel 4 also stream on all four again just so much fun when they were they had been storyboarding these at picnic again 10 I think did it they they sort of had these aliens sketched out that were very much based on these pop covers from the sixties seventies like these these novels decipher novels those little green man from Mars which I kind of adapted and I wanted but I kind of wanted something different I didn't when I go for a green orange yellow sort of route for the color scheme I wanted something cleaner so I give them gave them some suits because I figured you know these beings from outer space that are super developed and have these amazing technology they wouldn't be running around naked maybe or maybe they would who knows but again for the spaceship for the suits it was I was I was looking at Dragonball stuff because I loved it as a child and I was like that kind of stuff is just so much fun and definitely looked at those to design the spaceship definitely was looking at those healing pots from Dragon Ball when I drew this thing and yeah.

12:06I think this one is actually maybe my my favorite frame from the entire the entire project just because it was so much fun it's yeah and yeah this this shot I think is also I just really like it it's very like I don't know epic so as I said there were eight animations I'm just going to run you through very quickly for through these the ones from the the other animations in this theory James turns into a giant turtle that flies them off to Mexico and that's how it escaped the police in this one completely surreal the shot that you hear was actually a party popper and it was a surprise party for James and the whole cast is there to sort of celebrate with him even this one who's that and for this one the figure was that ELISA was actually a time traveler and she would be adopted into a different family every few decades and they would grow suspicious when she never grew old so she would have to run off that was the theory and this one the sound that you hear at the end might have been the entire world just exploding and it's the end of the entire universe and everything is just yeah just disappears in this one the theory was that they the two characters were actually James was Elise and ELISA was James and the police gets so confused that they just let them go and they walk into the sunset romantically and for this one the final one which is actually the one that you saw during peach face the theory was that James was one of many many clones and when he gets shot it. Actually awakens his powers and also all the other clones and then mayhem ensues and that's what is gonna happen in season two according to this theory again all the the little sketches that you see in the quarter were were storyboarded by tan at picnic which again looks just like when you're doing an animation in less than two months a ten missions and trying to illustrate the whole thing just having it storyboard it for you is like so helpful it all culminated with you know obviously the release of the campaign and also they made this whole thing into a tiny book that they had at London MCM Comic Con they had channel 4 had his entire lounge dedicated to this campaign and the TV show.

14:55And I actually got to sit in that chair on that table along with 10 and I drew for a lot of people that weekend so yeah sometimes when you you. Actually put yourself into your work and you have fun with it you might actually end up getting paid to spend your weekend at a comic convention which can be really fun these are all the people involved in the projects and thanks to them and thanks to you for listening to me [Applause]