Comics A/V Star Wars: Dark Empire Animated Series (Fan Made)

An attempt to bring the story of Dark Empire as an animated series has been undertaken by a YouTube channel called WilkinsAnimations. The first episode (covering the first issue of the original Dark Empire comic) has been released:



I'm impressed by the first episode. The animation is loosely in the style of the '80s Droids cartoons, which gives a nice old cartoon vibe. The color palette used in the episode evokes the artwork from the comics faithfully without being a direct copy. The voice acting is good too - Lando and C-3PO are almost spot-on.

A very decent entry, considering it's fan made!

 

Funny you say that, the audio for this comes directly from the official audio drama adaptation made by Highbridge Audio. Billy Dee Williams voiced Lando.


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I desperately hope this means we will get Palpatine narrating how Leia is tipping over his bed as we see her doing it.

 

Oh my bad, I didn't realize that was the case. I've never listened to the audio drama, so I wouldn't know. Thanks for correcting me!

 

Yeah, the art looks like a mix of the DE comic and Bakshi's LOTR. I especially loved seeing in motion the "where the Emperor used to hang his hat" view of Imperial City.

 

I love this and hope they do way more and continue it, I love the old school animation style and love for details. Really well done! Even voices sound right and they are epic!

Here is hoping more fans get on to such vivid fan animation projects. I mean NJO animated? Can we dream?

 

Oh I have heard about this, I think you can donate if you want....Glad to see episode 1 is done.

 

Really cool animation! Another one I have the eye is this Heir of the Empire adaptation:



The guy (Darth Angelus) adapted the first two chapters and he has plans to make all the Thrawn trilogy!

 

For fan-made animation, that certainly wasn't bad at all. It had a very pleasing old-school "Holiday Special" vibe to it (meant in an entirely complimentary way). I'll look forward to future chapters!

 

They're taking donations? How long until Disney shuts these down? I mean, they are practically making new Star Wars movies here...

 

Plenty of fan films raise funds on Kickstarter, Patreon, etc. without issue. If Lucasfilm is going to have a problem with anything here, it'll probably be their use of the audio drama.

 

Yeah that audio drama is problematic too. Fan films have always been a legally murky situation though. That other Star franchise had a long legal fight over that Axanar film.

At the end of the day though, I have no doubt if Disney wanted to shut down this Dark Empire cartoon they could do so legally. The only question right now is whether they are aware of it or not.

 

Lucasfilm has always been pretty lenient with fan films. I mean, SW theory just made one that costs thousands of dollars and got millions of views and it's fine. I don't see them really caring about the audio drama either, as it hasn't been re-released in years and they aren't really profiting off of it anymore.

 

Maybe Disney should make an arrangement with the fan films to be shown on Disney Plus?

 

Well, I'm getting slightly worried that the fan animation might get blocked by Disney So, EckhartsLadder made a live reaction video to the fan animation a few hours ago - when I click on it, the video doesn't start but instead I get a message saying:

Video unavailable
This video contains content from Disney, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.
​

I didn't watch EckhartsLadder's live stream and therefore I don't know if Disney blocked it because of the fan film discussed in it, or because something else was used in it that the Mouse didn't like to give away for free. For those that might have watched the live stream, any information you can share on the matter?

 

I haven't watched the video you're talking about, but seeing as the original fan animation is still up, it was probably something else used in the video.

 

I think this is pretty good, but I'd say they need to work on art consistency. Specifically with the character models. Shots look like a good imitation of the Nelvana style of the Holiday Special short and Droids, but then others look like they tried to make exact copies of Cam Kennedy'd art and those 2 styles are *very* distinct.

If there's any kind of infringement on this it will definitely be use of the audio drama.

Liked the use of the B1 Battle Droid heads on those junk war droids. Though I have tended to imagine them to be largely Super Battle Droids.

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As much as I see the point for licensing and rights stuff, I say in modern society it gets more and more in the way of creativity and artistic freedom. Not just in media and fandoms. Companies are licensing and copyrighting even mother natures gifts like plants and fruits, vegetables... its nuts.

Licensing has become a messy field that does not serve humanity as much as it hinders it, I fear. Too many great projects and ideas never happen or vanish quickly due to it.

And with recent trends of governments and lobbyists alike to destroy the internet and any new free culture emerging from it by setting it back via overregulation to times long gone by, this evolution can't be stopped, merely forced to take some detours.

Where would the world be if everybody would crack down on copyright issues as hard as they could? No Fanart, no Fanfiction, no fans freely sharing official news and posts, no free marketing via viral fandom spreading news. No fansites using sw logos and pics.


With full game walkthroughs on youtube, entire soundtracks on youtube freely accessible (even if ripping them is illegal), and all that, where do they draw the line on what they crack down hard and on what not? Even Vader Immortal VR walkthroughs exist complete.

What about all the fan recuts of offcial movies? They are quite popular with some (not me, never saw a single fanrecut). What about fans doing their own audiocommentary track to movies? Or replacing official music with different soundtracks to flavor scenes differently? Fan parody vids/songs?

We see them crack down on a lot, but some more than other bits. F.e. all the ugly sides of fandom get mostly ignored. Or can't they legally get to those fanartists and fanfic authors who do 18+ versions of SW?

I see double morals at work again... they do not per se crack down but rather only on music and full tv/movie rips. The typical anti piracy lobby at work. Even if it is futile in the age of the internet and everything spreading to countless servers before it even can get taken down.

Why do they react so strongly about some fields but ignore fanartists selling their art? All the fancreated content stores, t-shirts, art prints, cosplayers etc. selling stuff?

 

Complicated stuff there. A bit of a line has to be drawn between fan and parody re-use of big commercial properties, and the theft of smaller scale works by artists who don't have big corporate money to pay for lawyers or people to go after the thieves. I co-run an independent record label and it's a constant battle to get ANY money to our artists in comparison to how much their work gets shared for free. Disney is less impacted by that kind of thing, but how would one quantify the difference? For the most part anyone consuming SW fan art has paid for the original content already and if anything this adaptation will help sell a few more comics or the audio drama on which it's based -- it's good for the IP, whereas people who just get one of our albums for free pretty much... just get one of our albums for free. (It doesn't help that legal music streaming sites are pretty much just as bad as piracy for independent musicians, but that's a whole 'nother issue.)

 

From the PC gaming world, the argument for abandonware by some was that even buying a used PC game from ebay/gamestop/wherever didn't actually get the game developers any money, so even though it was bought legally it made no difference from outright downloading it from some abandonware site from the point of view of the game developers.

 

The account just posted a 17 second long video of episode two, the description of which says the full version will be released in October 2020. At this rate, if they go all the way through to Empire’s End, it’ll finish around 2043 lol.


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quality takes time unless they jump on the kickstarter go fund me trend to finish faster... but I advise against such

 

This looks fantastic. I love the retro look. The Dark Empire Collector's set was one of my first Star Wars audio dramas I obtained as a teenager, and I've probably listened to it hundreds if not thousands of times while laying in bed.

 

Another small update for episode 2.