Art Vault The Many Works of Tim Eldred

Art Vault The Many Works of Tim Eldred is the official website of Tim Eldred, a concept and storyboard artist on Wing Commander Academy. It includes a thorough article about Mr. Eldred's history with Wing Commander Academy, multiple image galleries and several pieces of recolored concet art.

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Posted on February 21, 2021

Wing Commander Academy, 1996

What single decision did you make that changed your whole life?

For me, it was the decision to make Grease Monkey back in 1992. Everything I am now, everything I have now, started with that decision. I go into it in detail over at the Grease Monkey website here, so I’ll give you the short version.

One of the publishers that took it on was Kitchen Sink Press. They’d had some success turning their magnificent Xenozoic Tales comics into a TV cartoon called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and they were looking for another title to do the same. This was right around the time I approached them, so that was lucky timing. They published the comic and hooked me up with an agency (The Gotham Group) that represented animators to take the next step. I was paired up with a writer named Jymn Magon, and we developed a TV pitch that we took to various studios in 1995.

It’s a common Hollywood story for someone to get turned down by every studio until they get to the last one on the list and something magic happens. That’s how it went for me. The last studio on our list was Universal. When Producer Ralph Sanchez got a look at my Grease Monkey pitch, he told me about another show he was developing called Wing Commander Academy. In my pitch he saw what his show needed – presentation art to close the deal. He hired me on the spot as a freelancer to create two images from scratch (both shown below), and they got the job done. The next thing I heard was that the series was a go, and they wanted me on board.

Ralph shepherded Grease Monkey through a development deal at another studio the following year (Film Roman), but that was ultimately unsuccessful. The point of this story is that Grease Monkey qualified me for my first animation job, and I’ve been working in animation ever since. Whether or not Grease Monkey ever gets animated, the decision to make it changed my life.

So let’s talk about the first TV cartoon I ever worked on: Wing Commander Academy.

The Wing Commander franchise began with a 1990 computer game that took flight simulators into outer space, pitting the human race against a feline species called the Kilrathi. The first game spawned several more, and with the third game (1994) it had leveled up enough to attract major actors for live-action cutscenes, including Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell. This further boosted the game’s clout and ultimately brought it into consideration for a TV series. I can in no way take credit for anything that went on before I arrived, but I’m honored to have played an important part in getting it through the final obstacle.

I was certainly well-rewarded for my contribution. I’d been wanting to find a way into animation since I landed in L.A. three years earlier. Many artists before me had either graduated from comics to cartoons or drifted back and forth between them, so there was definitely a pathway. That pathway is a little different for everyone, but luck and timing are always critical ingredients. Right place, right time. Wing Commander Academy needed storyboard artists and a secondary character designer, and I was asked to be both; an incredible offer for someone with no prior experience.

I’d dabbled a little with storyboarding before then, but I didn’t know enough about filmmaking for it to give me an advantage. What I lacked in experience I made up for with what Ralph Sanchez must have recognized as aptitude. I’d been drawing comics non-stop for seven years by that point, refining my storytelling sensibility and designing whatever was needed on the fly. All those skills were transferrable.

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• Art Vault The Many Works of Tim Eldred