Big Five is MCCI’s flagship project. Originally conceived in 2012, Big Five is an exploration into anti-poaching in Africa combining themes of wildlife, conservation, poaching of endangered species, animal trafficking, drone technology, and the social implications each of these entails.
Named after the Big Five game animals of Africa (Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Cape Buffalo, and the Elephant,) the series explores a world where drones that appear and behave like their organic counterparts are employed in both anti-poaching and poaching activities. Rangers patrol their assigned territories, using technology plus bushcraft to track and thwart would be poachers. Meanwhile poachers employ the same means in an attempt to hunt their selected targets.
As this technology has been deployed and developed; rangers, poachers, and drones have become local celebrities, taking on a life of their own. Beyond their roles in the field, many drones are used in non-combative capacities such as: beasts of burden, animal fostering, and as luxury accessories/pets. Access to this level of technology has been attributed to the rapid expansion of the African continent, and has begun to spread across the world creating new use cases and advances in adjacent industries.
In it’s original form Big Five consisted of 76 pieces, plus a myriad of sketches, graphics, and text. The series was featured heavily across multiple news outlets at the time, giving it some legitimacy. In 2017 the project was optioned by Lionsgate studio for potential production as a film property, though this never panned out.
Currently the project is being revived and revamped with new pieces being generated to expand the universe while increasing the quality of the work with the intent to bring the project back to market.
The Big Five project is also home to the Inferno project, a series in the same universe that focuses on wildland firefighting in the Pacific Northwest of North America.
Named after the Big Five game animals of Africa (Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Cape Buffalo, and the Elephant,) the series explores a world where drones that appear and behave like their organic counterparts are employed in both anti-poaching and poaching activities. Rangers patrol their assigned territories, using technology plus bushcraft to track and thwart would be poachers. Meanwhile poachers employ the same means in an attempt to hunt their selected targets.
As this technology has been deployed and developed; rangers, poachers, and drones have become local celebrities, taking on a life of their own. Beyond their roles in the field, many drones are used in non-combative capacities such as: beasts of burden, animal fostering, and as luxury accessories/pets. Access to this level of technology has been attributed to the rapid expansion of the African continent, and has begun to spread across the world creating new use cases and advances in adjacent industries.
In it’s original form Big Five consisted of 76 pieces, plus a myriad of sketches, graphics, and text. The series was featured heavily across multiple news outlets at the time, giving it some legitimacy. In 2017 the project was optioned by Lionsgate studio for potential production as a film property, though this never panned out.
Currently the project is being revived and revamped with new pieces being generated to expand the universe while increasing the quality of the work with the intent to bring the project back to market.
The Big Five project is also home to the Inferno project, a series in the same universe that focuses on wildland firefighting in the Pacific Northwest of North America.