Greetings folks, after a good bit of R&R over the summer, we're back at it with concepts, further development and pitching our buts off to make Hangry a reality beyond ideas. First off, we appreciate everyone sharing the adventure with us and supporting what we're sharing on socials... we have pockets of busy weeks and dry spells as we focus on the actual doing! So it really does help when folks enjoy, comment, like and further share our content. Community is key, and that's something we're determined to build and get right.

Now into the meat and potatoes of it all. Hangry Animals is and always has been a long term vision of products surrounding good causes. But it's not the focal point, it's the benefit of all the pieces we bring together under one umbrella of a universe, we call The Hangryverse. Stories, characters, ideas and personalised collectibles for everyone to enjoy. From comics, games, animated shorts and series, to vinyl toys and wearable merch... we can have it all, but we need to start small and build from there. We'll be posting a future blog on our adventures at this summers Comicon's later in Sept, so keep an eye out for that! Have we reached peak digital? who knows? We're certainly feeling the urge to break free of the screen and create physical experiences alongside our digital products here, and our adventures at recent Comicons.. eherm "Research trips", may have tipped the balance to explore more physical goods and product ranges.

We're seeing emerging brands such as Claynosaurz and Pudgy Penguins gaining traction in the merchandise and product space, which all started with a reverse model to what is traditionally used to grow brand in the entertainment space. Typically there's a $10m animated series, followed by comics, toys and merch, where the licensing companies are recouping their promotional dollars before the brand owners gets their cut of the proceeds, beyond that advance on the sale of the series to a network or streaming service. That advance sale by the way, may involve a buy out of the IP... meaning the creator no longer owns or has the rights to their work for future projects.. crazy. If anyone watched Final Space on its run over on Netflix, look up Olan Roger's journey to regain control of a slither of his creation to make a graphic novel that completes the story of the series he created that was cancelled by Warner Brothers/TVS during a merger, crazy to think your pride and joy, part of your being can be buried in a file cabinet at a network never to be seen again or written as a tax write off in Olan's case...

Enter community first, community owned IP! Welcome to a new business model for creators.

Claynosaurz is a great example of how a very capable team, with film and effects experience saw the light and built a series of dynamic collectibles (Yes NFTs, spits out mud, blerrchhh), built an audience around these fun, colourful dinosaurs and got the publicity and attention of big networks resulting in a deal with Disney. The community made that happen, by buying into colourful jpgs... mad right? No upfront expenditure or venture capital money, no outlay of additional costs beyond staff wages paid for by ongoing revenue from effects and animation work! Just graft and an idea, and a community.

Claynosaurz is now one of the biggest success stories of 2024/25 in the animation space, having presented at both web3 conferences and Annecy international Film Festival this past July. They are blurring the lines and narratives associated with NFTs in the media space, and we're all for it. With these guys and legends like Todd McFarlane (Spawn, Spiderman) advocating for the perks of digital collectibles on live streams, even this year, we see a future where collectibles as tokens of attendance at events or participation in livestreams will become more commonplace as creators see the upsides of gifting pieces of digital art to their audiences at one off events as a token of gratitude. That's the beauty of art in the hands of creatives.... So exciting!

This model of growing a community alongside the brand and IP, is the model we've been advocating for since day one. But what's missing? The Markets? The vision? resources? maybe all of them. Timing plays a huge role in when to launch or promote a product, and finding our feet in web2 & web3 has not been easy. But among all of the projects that had hype, made a handsome fee from sales of collectibles through 2020 - 2025 and faded, there aren't many of note that have stuck around and are still building the vision they set out to build.

Even Bored Ape Yatch Club's seems to have put a sour taste in the mouths of it's community an games seem to be on the back burner following the downturn in market and attention. We can't compare ourselves to these properties right now, but the ambition remains. Build a brand that resonates for the characters, stories and causes we stand for and have fun while doing so.

We're in the middle of development of our first game Nom Nom Express, which will have both a web2 experience we aim to release on platforms such as Steam etc, but we also want that extra slice for the web3 digital collectible owners, and will therefore offer an independent release for our community of holders with added benefits and ways to give & earn through play, new characters and items to use in the challenges as well as unique vehicles exclusive to holders. The mission to revenue and giving back, and finding the sweet spot with both has been a long and arduous journey, but one we fully believe will reap the benefits in years to come. Let's not forget, cash is king, so building and releasing products audiences want, comes first, so we're in it for the long haul for sure. With the completion of our R&D (Research and Development) project now done, we've gained some great insight to move forward with our game development strategy. Some surprising nuggets of data too! All will be revealed in good time.

As well as this complex adventure with games, we're in the early stages of development with a comic mini series that better ties to the worlds of the game we're planning. We've always wanted the Hangry Animals characters to feel grounded and build empathy in the worlds they occupy. This interconnected series of experiences will place Otis, Zebrina, Brian, Sue and Marv in tricky situations on our version of Earth at their delivery day jobs with a twist... as well as their night time super team adventures defending their world one snack at a time!! Comics are accessible, fairly quick to produce and can be distributed digitally and eventually physically. This allows us the opportunity to test what works before committing to print. We've already completed 17 of the 22 pages required for issue 1 of this mini series concept and will update the community as this evolves over the coming few weeks..

Don't forget our fist Comic was created last year, and tells the story of Otis' origins. We may revisit this in a future release or retrospective review to connect the newer art style and persona work developed by our very own Ceri Angel, to further ground our Hangry's ready for the spotlight. We also created a mini comic with Bill Blazer a community member, and his two kids, telling the tale of Finn the young skateboarding Shark, guest staring Bill's kids toys Butcake and Dave. We've since minted 1/1's of Butcake and Dave as illustrations for our young fans, and can't wait to do more of this community gratitude initiatives in the future.

As ideas and stories develop, we're seeing more opportunities to express the essence of each character fully. Zebrina is definitely a hard ass, focussed on the mission kind of gal, but there's humour in this bluntness. Same goes for Otis's size to scared ratio.. We first saw Otis as this beast of a guy who can handle anything, but the more situations we through him into, the inexperience, clumsiness and finding the fun in everything attitude makes for better reading and character exploration we're enjoying writing Otis right now! Onwards to more adventures with everyone.

With love and hangryness!
The Hangry Animals Team
www.hangryanimals.com

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