Mister Who is an ex-gang member turned karmic vigilante. It’s also a rich multimedia project involving comic books, music and even animation. The Mister Who team is involved in school workshops in the UK as part of a community outreach to youngsters.
Geek Native has been lucky enough to score an interview with the creative minds behind Mister Who. That follows this short Mister Who trailer. Worth a watch!
Q1. The website has a section that explains that man who created Mister Who remains anonymous. Why’s that? Are we talking to the Creator now?
Just to clarify the set up. Mister Who was the name of my music project. I came up with the idea of making him a cartoon character and approached Tayo. We’re cousins and I knew he had done some work for Manga uk. That was when the real creative work into developing Mister Who began. We have definitive roles within Mister Who but Tayo and I are his heart beat. Tayo is in charge of the animation and illustration whilst I’m in charge of the song writing and writing of the comics. My writing partner, Paul Stokes and I are called Tek 2. We all do other projects which we wouldn’t want to detract from Mister Who, hence the anonymous tag. You could say I planted the Mister Who seed but there are now others who make sure it gets enough water and light and keep it nourished.
Q2. Mister Who is a comic, an animation, there’s music and even talk of a TV series! Just how big is this project? Where does it get its money from?
Rasheed – The project is as big as we’re able to make it. We do everything independently but we have big dreams. Tayo and I set up our company Dual Amp ltd for all the different strands of Mister Who. Dual Amp Music is our record label for the release of the singles, Dual Amp publishing for the comics and Dual Arts / Perpetual Arts for the animation. We’re talking to tv execs about a possible series but nothing concrete. We’re probably a year or so away from the series.
Tayo – The money has come form selling the comics and donations from investors who like our idea. It’s not easy but trust us we’re pushing this as hard as possible. At the moment we’re the little guys in a huge pond. When Bob Kane and Bill Finger created Batman in 1939 they created a character bigger than life, we want to do the same. Hopefully Mister Who will out last us.
Q3. How long does it take to produce a Mister Who video for YouTube? Does a project of this size leave any time for a social life?
Tayo – It takes about three months, depending on the length of the footage but our first animated music video ‘Get on it’ has taken a little longer because of the level of detail involved. Our team are small but hopefully as the project expands , we can hire more staff to get things done quicker.
Rasheed and I came up with the video concept idea and then I sat down with our CGI specialist, Bernie Bakari. It’s been a rollercoaster four months because when the workshops and comic cons come up we stop work in the music studio and animation suite and get the whole team involved.
Social life ?! That’s a good one. We eat, sleep, breathe Mister Who !!
Q4. Will we see Mister Who appearing on digital comic sites like Graphicly.com or even raising funds for more projects on sites like Kickstarter.com?
We’re just chatting to the Graphicly guys so we’ll see how that goes.
We want to make the digital comic available on Itunes so all that kind of stuff will need to be sorted. Didn’t know about Kickstarter. Nice 1.
Q5. It looks like the Mister Who team gets involved with trips to schools. Is that a core part of the Mister Who philosophy?
Rasheed – The workshops are a massive part of the Mister Who philosophy. Tayo and I are from inner city London and the schools we went to never really encouraged us to follow that creative instinct. At the moment inner city kids need creative outlets more than ever
Tayo – There seems to be a natural path towards music based projects for young people but animation and comics seems to be an area that’s less accessible. Illiteracy levels are high but a great way to encourage kids to read is via comics.
Q6. A famous “Who” is Doctor Who? Was the BBC’s sci-fi character in mind at all when Samuel Leone picked up his hero name?
Rasheed – Lol ! We totally respect what Doctor Who has achieved. They’re a massive British export. We met one of the Doctor Who comic writers, Tony Lee at the London Expo. He was fantastic and gave us some great advice on our future issues. Weirdly enough my mind was a million miles from the good ‘Doctor’, when Samuel Leone was given his alter-ego, the name was used as part of my music project. Then Tayo and I decided to explore where we could take the Mister Who character. Here we are.
Q7. What other digital comics would you recommend?
Rasheed – Found out about ‘Echoes’ and ‘Other worlds’ on Graphicly.
Tayo – Mirabilis – Year of Wonders looks pretty good from the first issue.
