animatic depicting the tragedy of the clone wars and answers the question: what if Commander Fox was able to put down the gun and raise it at at someone else?
Song: Take Me to War (Live) by the Crane Wives
if one (1) person asks I will post an in depth analysis of every panel
I need to hear the analysis now. This was incredible!
GOTTEM I GET TO RANT NOW! (thanks so much btw!!!)
apologies this is gonna be really long
format is [lyric]: description; explanation/comments
- [I've earned myself a reputation]: all of the commanders and Rex as cadets; I wanted to start from the beginning
- [That my bark | is much worse than | my bite]: zoom in on cadet wolffe, change to older wolffe; I mean. self explanatory bro chose his name to be a misspelled animal pfff
- [But I keep snapping at Goliath's hands]: the iconic scene when Plo Koon and two of the Wolfpack are stuck and Plo Koon says they’re not expendable; I liked the idea that Plo Koon rebelled in his own way, eg. appreciation of his sons
- [With all of my tiny might]: pan to the two troopers; clones have very little control, but they fight for each other as hard as they can
- [There are no stones at my disposal]: Rex’s helmet; Rex likely often feels powerless to stop Anakin’s antics
- [There's no God to award me a crown]: hands grab Rex’s helmet; Rex means “king,” this is sorta alluding to the idea that he gave himself his own crown (name/helmet/honor)
- [But I am always swinging at]: 501st on umbara
- [Somebody I can't knock down]: pong krell, blasters in peripheral; self explanatory, except they do shoot him down
- [All of the fire I've swallowed]: gree with luminara unduli; no concrete reasoning for this, but possible suspicions that luminara encourages the troopers to hide their feelings for others since she’s like that with barriss
- [All of the sparks that went dark in my gut]: gree watching ahsoka and barriss walk away (gree is slightly smiling); he worries for barriss, especially considering how young padawans are, and he feels like an older brother
- [I am always burning up]: gree watching hologram of the tank getting crushed; canon episode reference! he’s distressed abt potentially losing barriss and has no power to stop it :(
- [Dress me in red and throw your roses]: fox on patrol and a bottle gets thrown at him; red armor! bottle=roses!
- [And I'll wrangle the beast with words]: fox standing behind palpatine; palps is a yapper also fox lies to him to save his brothers (often at his own expense)
- [It's a graceless dance of epithets]: fox standing behind senator chuchi; uhhhh senators scheming but for good ‼️
- [We learn to make somewhat hurt]: fox standing alone without helmet, bleeding; note he has lighting scars (rude palps) and early gray hairs (due to his brothers, but I also like the head canon that he’s “defective” and has been getting these his whole life and that’s why he never takes off his helmet)
- [They will consume your sweet resistance]: bly looking at Ayla; bly is a sweetheart just try to argue with me
- [And they'll carry your heart in their teeth]: Aayla smilkng at bly; teeth literally with the smiling, also blyla <3
- [But I am always feeding them]: Felucia battlefield; very sad parallel with canon
- [The ugliest parts of me]: bly and aayla fighting droid; they for sure don’t want to fight, but they have to
- [All of the words I've swallowed]: ponds fighting with windu on ryloth; as cool as windu is, it must have been difficult to work with him
- [All of the sharp things I've kept in my mouth]: ponds and Zillo beast; teeth. sharp things in mouth are teeth
- [I am always bleeding out]: death by aurra sing; uhhh this was supposed to be aurra sing I drew the wrong person, but symbolically I think I had boba bc he was technically fighting against the other clones (ngl I drew this one a while ago and was very sleep deprived)
- [Take me to war]: cody, obi wan, and anakin at holotable; this was a common scene in the war, eternal planning
- [Honey, I dare you]: obi wan, from over Cody’s shoulder; obi wan had many antics that poor cody had to suffer through, and codywan <3
- [I'll be the sweetest thing]: ghost company with obiwan; they’re all besties ur honor
- [To ever scare you]: obi wan “dead” arc, ghost company watching hologram; BIG sad, wish we could have seen at least ghost company at the “funeral”
- [Give me a fight I can't resist]: numa; this was originally gonna have boil and waxer with her but I got lazy, anyway they want to protect her
- [Give me something to break with my fists]: cody punching droid; the commander class is just Built Different, cody even more so
- [Take me to war]: cody picking up lightsaber; I often think abt the fact cody canonically has a belt clip for a lightsaber
- [Honey, I dare you]: cody handing lightsaber to obi wan; really wanna know how often this happened for the aforementioned belt clip
- [I watched a weed usurp the garden]: a corrie in senate pod, palps at the center of the senate talking from over a guards left shoulder; crusty dusty palps swaying the senate, also over left shoulder indicates “bad people” and the opposite for right
- [And it poisoned the rest of the crops]: senate pods with corrupt sentars going forward
- [Would take days of fighting stubborn roots]: padme, bail, mothma over right shoulder of guard; let them cook ‼️
- [To tear the whole damn thing out]: senate building; the whole place is pretty much corrupt
- [So I will leave it where it's standing]: back to guard looking at senate floor, leaves out of frame
- [And instead I will find me a match]: fox w/blaster facing fives; fives could have been the key to avoiding the Horrors
- [I'll turn it all to kindling]: fox lowers blaster; what I wish could have happened, don’t ask me how this would have been feasible (I hc that palps was controlling fox here)
- [I'll burn it all down to ash]: hologram of The Chip; this could have been the key to fixing it all, so in my delusion fives gets to tell fox and spread the word
- [All of the ire I've swallowed]: fox w/gun; he’s mad when he finds out
- [All of the coals that still sit in my gut]: palps, menacing; he’s actually The Worst
- [I am always burning up]: fox raises gun, blaster pulled, silhouettes, palps shot; man I just wanted fox to shoot palps bc he deserves it the most
- [Take me to war]: plo’s bros on side of ship; this section is all “memories”/ happy times
- [Honey, I dare you]: Rex and ahsoka spying on padme and anakin; bestest siblings, legit one of my favorite ideas, in the original sketch I had anakin ranting abt sand
- [I'll be the sweetest thing]: Ayla leaning against bly, asleep; once again, bly is the sweetest
- [To ever scare you]: coruscant guards laughing around a table with cards and drinks; don’t tell me everyone else wasn’t afraid of the Corries, also I like to think they would have game nights every now and then
- [Give me a fight I can't resist]: ponds at 79’s with others
- [Give me something to break with my fists]: gree is gifted a mug from barriss; this is an extremely obscure call back to another piece of art that I did where obiwan had a mug from ahsoka that says “best grandmaster” and I like to think the padawans have an arts class
- [Take me to war]: ghost company with obi wan at dex’s; the usual suspects including boil, waxer, cody, wooly, AND fanmedic helix (he’s canon in my heart)
- [Honey, I dare you]: fives rescuing ech from skeco minor; echo was def sad when he realized his twin wasn’t there so I fixed that :)
Some general notes on artistic choices:
• While I usually draw in grayscale (rendering scares me), I specifically made any "identifying" features (like armor paint, hair color, etc.) for clones be present, partially for identification and partially with the idea that these are the things that show their individuality. The only exception to this was when there was a lightsaber (I like the cool glowing sticks).
• Characters besides the clones are specifically in a single shade of gray to put more focus on the clones (as this is meant to be an animatic about THEIR tragedy). However, there are a few cases when I made the other characters be "rendered" but in grayscale if what they are doing/their character arc has an impact on the clones in the panel.
• Most of this portrays canon or canon-adjacent to a certain point, I made the second half in mind of "What if Fox was able to chose differently."
• During the final "Take Me to War" section, the panels are specifically grayscale because they are supposed to depict happy "memories" of the war. In my "headcanon what-if" clones no longer need their identifying colors after the war because they have found their autonomy with the end of the war, though many may still keep them. (this is totally not because I didn't want to fully color more panels shhhhhhh)
• I learned how to edit videos in Blender for this
