Star-Crossed

***Star-Crossed*** is a multi-media crossover comic series created by Gingacreator on DeviantArt back in 2021. A secondary release was also posted up on Tapas.io in late 2023.

## Early Development

The idea behind the story, according to the artist, came from the artist's enjoyment of animal-based stories, and the note of how little animal-focused stories take place in a "post-apocalyptic setting" (alien invasion, human intervention, etc.) The story is meant to mix both the concept of a post-apocalyptic world and an alien-invasion story but through the eyes of animals rather than strictly through humans. This concept remained true throughout the entire process, and into the release of the official comic.

## Early Concepts

### Early Story Transcripts

Numerous known variations of the story had been considered throughout the main development, most of which not directly involving human characters due to the main concept being that of an animal's point-of-view. Numerous other franchises were also considered for the comic, mainly as a means for introducing different creatures into the world, but eventually it was settled on just a few due to the complications already currently involved.

* Numerous early concepts had creatures found in franchises such as Trollhunter, Monster Hunter, and Primeval. Many of these other shows were scrapped from concept, but Trollhunter did make its way into the comic series.
* A number of early story ideas often shown Kimba having a similar ability to that of Fiver, in the ability of future-vision like dreams. This was likely to trim down the character count and have more focus on the main character, but later concepts had since removed this idea, and instead feature Fiver in the main story. One main story idea during this development mirrored that of the Disney movie: The Good Dinosaur, in which it follows Kimba after he is separated from his main tribe during an attack by a monstrous Tyrant Lizard. Overtime, this idea would be later scrapped prior to the main comic development.

### 2021 teaser poster

The Comic was first announced in April of 2021 as a teaser poster prior to the comic's official release few months later. Although the main concept described in the teaser poster still remains, as the comic went on since its release, this poster has become outdated namely due to the character designs differing from the actual comic in question, Tabaqi and Campion being the main exceptions to this. Many of the designs in the poster shown the character as their official designs from canon sources, while their in-comic appearances have them altered from slight changes to complete redesigns.

* Bagheera, Akela, Baloo, and Shere Khan were given official designs from their appearance in the soviet Russian movie "Adventures of Mowgli", while their appearances in the main comic are more original designs, most likely due to the designs being a bit complicated to create expressions from as opposed to their current look.
* The Crystal Gems are shown in official outfits (mainly their secondary forms). They're given original outfits in the comic, though while they do show these designs in flashbacks, it's likely they just reformed into different designs from the show due to the story's events rather than having these as their default form. This is also done with Peridot's original form and her in-comic appearance.
* Both Fox and Dash have slight differences from their main designs: Fox has more prominent eyebrows than his comic appearance and were given to Dash instead, and Dash had a split upper lip, but is later removed.
* Steven is shown younger with the animals than he is in the comic.
* Kimba has a fairly different design than that of his in-comic appearance: he is shown the same size as Steven, with a split upper lip, and more fur along his chest and inside his ears.

## Volume Concepts (Incomplete)

The numerous volumes of the comic series had undergone their own different concepts during their development:

### Vol. 01: Arrival (Ch.01 - 06)

* Chapter 01 was thought to have a more direct ending, in which the Crystal Gems are shown escaping the Human Zoo. This would've also directly introduced the Homeworld Hares, including Woundwort, into the story by the very end of it. However, due to time constraints, this was altered into a swifter ending where it was all mainly a vision, leaving the actual escape ambiguous.
* Chapter 02's crash scene was originally going to have the Human Zoo crash down into Earth, thus introducing the Gems and Steven right away to the animals of the jungle. However, while a complete page was finished with this concept in mind, this was later altered into the Red Eye instead due to it being of much more reasonable size, whereas the size of the Human Zoo crashing into earth would've caused a mass extinction like impact - something the creator didn't want to happen.
* Chapter 04's ending originally was going to have the Gems reunite with Steven right away, rather than extend to chapter 05 (which normally would've gone straight to the Council Meeting), but the current version was done to better show more story developments such as Peridot reuniting with the Gems, along with showing Steven's abilities and more of the world.

### Vol. 02: Adaptation

* The original title of this volume was going to simply be "Volume 02: Bandar-Log", named after the tribe of the same name, but this was altered as more chapters were added to the volume.
	+ The original number of said chapters was only going to be two, both involving the characters' involvement with the Bandar-Log.

### Vol. 07: Isolation

* The original title of this volume was going to "Volume 07: The Great North", named after the main location that would've taken place, but this was altered later in development.

## Gallery

Star-Crossed 2021 teaser posterTapas.io release cover