Chris Chapman, former head of R&D at Spitting Image Projects has announced the launch of an animated satirical show, phyzog.tv, that will be delivered to mobile devices twice a week from early summer.
Chapman has formed a new company, Fizcast, to launch the show and to exploit the “ground-breaking” interactive mobile technology that has been developed to make it happen.
“We can place our digital caricatures in a myriad of environments and cover that day’s news for an evening broadcast, with viewers becoming participants and interacting directly with the animation and show,” says Chapman. “If you’ve always wanted to suggest a sketch for David Cameron, or prod him with the arms of ‘the poor’, now you can.”
The team making Phyzog includes former Spitting Image caricaturists and voice artists, puppeteers from Harry Potter movies, app builders who’ve worked on Lara Croft titles, as well as new writing talent.
“Spitting Image satirical puppets were a new technology for the end of the last century. This could be the new technology for satire in the 21st century,” says Peter Fluck, one of the two co-founders of Spitting Image.
Fizcast is also in discussion with TV production companies about giving phyzog.tv characters a life in ‘normal’ TV. To fund the project, Fizcast is attempting to raise a minimum of £350,000 using the Crowdcube small business finance platform to invite members of the public to invest in the business in return for a share of the equity.
“The people investing in small businesses on Crowdcube love the sort of innovation that phyzog.tv is about,” says Crowdcube director Luke Lang. “Media, mobile and entertainment are all popular sectors and Fizcast combines all three.”