AEROVENGE - 2015 proto-WYIT short film animatic (Patreon)

Some of you may recall around 2015ish I did worldbuilding collab project called Empire of the New Sun with the artist known as Jennadelle. Around the end of the project I was trying to apply to film studios for storyboarding work, and this was my first animatic, which takes place in the EoTNS (proto-WYIT) world.

The frame speed might be a little too fast for some, so I suggest viewing at .75 speed.

(Also, sorry for the repost!! Was having trouble getting all my attachments to cooperate and had to start over)

Obviously, I didn't get any of the story jobs, and for decent reason - I was spending way too much time on each frame and hadn't quite cracked how to think like a boarder. I was still approaching it too much like a "sequential illustrator", but got better at it after taking Rad Sechrist's online storyboarding course later on.

I'm able to look at this now and see how it wouldn't work from a studio production pipeline standpoint... BUT as a standalone short story, I still like its basic premise. Might improve & update it to fit into Wyit's world for a short comic treatment in the future, I think it could make for a cool 30-pager ashcan comic.

ALSO here's some concept art, to help give a little more context. Some of it was publicly posted before, but there's a bit in here I never put online until now. Enjoy!


First up, the design I went for with the pirate ship. Basically an early version of what I ended up using as the Fenathkin battleship design now seen here.  Had a lot of help from illustrator Sterling Hundley and concept designer TyRubin Ellingson (Hellboy, Blade, Avatar, etc), who were advising me a bit on this. Mechanical design is NOT my strong point, but TyRubin is one of the best in the industry.

Some previous stabs at designing the pirate ship. Pretty nutty now that I look back on these. They were all too sci-fi or psychedelic for the dieselpunk look I wanted.

Planes! When I later on developed WYIT I departed from the more conventional airplane look and opted for the more fantasied-up aerodynes we have now. But down below you can see some examples of the more TaleSpin/Porco-Rosso influenced stuff I used in AEROVENGE.

The character races in this used Jennadelle's old designs for the Sable (protagonist in this story, seen in her flightgear below) and Latran (badguy airpirates this time) peoples, back when the Sables were more like "furry dragons" with frilled ears and the Latran were kinda like the canine-ish race we see Wyit and Rek being from now.

More planes!

One of the more final versions of the Pilot. Helmet was a lil too sci-fi/modern though.

Some air pirates.