Felidae REBELS

Felidae REBELS is sorta a pet project of mine that is currently only in the thinking and concept-art process as well as a bit of writing. I'm constantly changing things about it, so some of the information about the story you see on this website may not even be the same tomorrow. 

Genre: Action / Adventure / Science Fiction/ Science Fantasy / Fantasy / Drama

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Felidae REBELS is about tyranny, rebellion, and struggle. We often have stories where aliens from outer space come and take over the planet. However, we never imagine doing the same with an alien planet. I personally think, if the technology got into the wrong hands, it could easily happen. 

There was a prosperous Kingdom in the desert of a planet Felidius in the Suihirian country. The royal family had welcomed new heirs to the throne. The King and Queen's three kittens had a promising future. This was all sadly cut short when an unknown entity had taken over the city and the Queen was forced to evacuate along with a couple dozen citizens. Since they have been ripped from their home, they had fought to get it back. 

The word "Felidae" is the scientific term for the entire family of cats. It's essentially a synonym of "felines" and refers to both wild and tame cats, big or small. The story is called "Felidae REBELS", because the story has to be "translated". You can't expect an alien race to speak an Earthen language or have Earthen terms, so humans would call this catlike species "Felidae". The "REBELS" part is there simply because nearly every Felidae on the planet is fighting to get the evil entity out of their home planet that's also trying to rule them. 

Many plot elements are recycled into this story from an old  fanfiction I did when I was younger. Because I strayed too far away from the original story, I believed I had the ability to stay on its own as something original after some adjustments are made. The only similarities between the original cannon I had made a fanfiction of and Felidae REBELS is that they both start where there's a queen with three children of the same birthday, and a tyrant forced them out of their right to rule, and the children as well as the Queen fight with others for their throne. 

So Felidae REBELS, is inspired by the basic plot of a failed cartoon, "Sonic Underground". I adored the concept of supposed children of royalty fighting a tyrant in an almost sci-fi/fantasy setting. It's just too bad that "Sonic Underground" had to slap in awful music and a beloved video game character to sell. I feel that if the video game character, the music, the horrible acting and the poor writing were removed, it would have been great in my eyes.

The Fanfiction  Era:  2004 - 2007

2003 was a year that I started getting into the Sonic bandwagon. In 2004 I started a fanfiction. It was intended to be a continuation of the DiC cartoon "Sonic Underground", but it ended up being a retelling and essentially a remake. It had several twists, new characters, love interests, and especially, a more developed plot. The only thing in the story that really wasn't my own were the five out many, many characters, and even their personalities were my own creation. By the 7th chapter of the story, it got so weird, so far from the original stories. I wound up struggling for ideas that would make sense to the original. In the summer of 2007, I've decided to stop my fanfiction and go turn everything that I have thought up on my own into something that it should have been in the first place: my own story. 

The Feline Era:  2006 - 2007

While I was writing my fanfiction, I have thought about what my story's future will hold. I often thought "I shall make the story the same, but make a few changes, and have all the characters be cats". The style of the cats was to resemble closely to the style of Osamu Tezuka's drawings, more specifically, the characters in "Kimba The While Lion".  To this day, the simplistic, fluid style influences my artwork.

I often thought about how the story would be. I often imagined them fighting against humans who are trying to take their land, or, they live in future Earth and they're fighting to survive. All and all, the rebel plot always stuck. I didn't think about it too much, because in the "Feline Era", I sorta kept it in mind that it was going to be something I'll do when I'm in college.

The Felidae Comic Era: 2007 - 2009

When I stopped my fanfiction, I started to think about my cats. For several weeks, I wanted to do "storyboard" animations of the main story, and I sometimes I would do nothing to progress the story, but imagine sequences I had already thought up. In short, I've spent a long time simply thinking about it. When I wanted to create a name for my story, I tried to think about the plot. I thought, "well, it stars cats, and they are fighting against tyranny", so that lead to something Rebels. I was a big fan of the German animated film "Felidae". I thought that "Felidae" was a really interesting word. So I thought that I would call my story "Felidae Rebels". For a while, especially during the period where I wanted the story to take place on another planet, I really wanted to change "Felidae" to something else. I then later thought that, since the cats probably spoke another language than English and their dialogue would be "translated", "Felidae" would be a close English translation to what they would call themselves. Over the course of making this story, I started calling my cats "Felidaen". For a while I thought that calling my alien cats a name of the entire family of Earth cats was really irrational, but, like the story with the name "Sorcha" [see FAQ], it just rolled off the tongue, so it stuck. 

In January of 2008, after much research and consideration, I decided to try and have Felidae REBELS be a comic. I wanted to get the prologue made first, because I wanted readers to relate to the story. If I had begun the main story first, I was afraid that people would ask too many questions that would never be answered. Late 2008, I wrote the prologue, titled "Felidius" at the time, into a Comic-Script format. However, after scripting most of the story, I realized that it was much too demanding to make a comic at this point in my life. 

The Felidae Novel Era: 2009 - Present

Being accepted in to an Advanced-Placement art class at my local High School inspired me to take my artwork a little bit more seriously. I have read many times that you have to learn to draw things realistically before you attempt to make something cartoony. So I spent a couple of weeks watching footage of wild leopard and mountain lions, looking at anatomy books, and drawing them. I have spent several days adapting the style I already had but applied them with realistic proportions. The most notable differences are that they have thicker necks, longer bodies and smaller ears. Their faces are more based off mountain lions while the bodies are mostly based off leopards. 

With this new-found style, I've decided that my comic should be left in the concept art phase. A novelization is in the works, but the prologue is dramatically reduced to just a few paragraphs. Many character traits have changed. The future, as of September 2009, shows that the story will slowly be written, likely rewritten, and maybe eventually be presented publicly. A flow of concept art is likely in the future.