Aeolian Hope, the Fan-Made Halo Webcomic

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Aeolian Hope

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Hey, everyone. Not sure why I didn't think to post this here before - I'm just so used to thinking of the 405th as just for props and costumes. Anywho, to the post!

I would like to invite you to begin enjoying Aeolian Hope, the fan-made Halo webcomic. This is an ongoing series written, composed and storyboarded by myself, and drawn by the very talented Brian Welker (who also happens to be my fiance's son). We are both huge Halo fans, so we decided to team up, combine our talents and produce something relatively new among the pantheon of Halo fan projects. Levi Hoffmeier produced the absolutely stunning Halo comic series, A Fistful of Arrows, but that was a finite, contained run whereas ours is an ongoing, serialized story. I am not aware of any other Halo fan-made comic books or webcomics that are story driven and not humorous (if you know of any, please share them!).

Aeolian Hope takes place in 2540, smack in the middle of the desperate Human-Covenant War. Almost all Halo games and official lore focus on the SPARTAN super-soldiers, which were actually a very rare sight during the long war with the Covenant. Since they were such an overpowering force, we feel that this dilutes an understanding of how very desperate the conflict actually was for humanity. Thus, we have decided to focus on some of the ordinary soldiers who fought and died during this pivotal era. Aeolian Hope explores themes of hopeful realism and unity. It is the story of those who aren't blessed by luck.

We're 14 pages into the 1st issue already, with page 15 due to release this Friday. We are just a few pages shy of being halfway done with the entire 1st issue, a milestone we're very excited for! Like any webcomic, we post each new page as it is completed. Currently it's about a two week production cycle per page, and the comic updates every other Friday (note: Our artist will be on vacation for the month of June, so there is a short but planned hiatus coming up).

In addition, we also recently started a section that spotlights other members of the Halo fan community with features on significant fan projects. I post one new one a month along with our monthly update, so this will eventually grow into a pretty neat little database of Halo fan projects.

We sincerely hope you'll give this a read. Hopefully you enjoy it enough to follow the story as it unfolds!
 
Here are a couple preview images from Issue 1 so far. Pages 9 & 13, to be specific.

Issue 1 Page 9 PANELED.jpg

Issue 1, Page 13.jpg
 
This is awesome! You two definitely have a creative talent for comics, and I'm going to bookmark this page! In the future, would you ever consider getting it published through Bungie/343 or would it solely remain as a web-comic? Just curious to see if you ever planned on taking it to the next level.
 
any chance do you think he'd do story boards for the fan films? if not I understand because I know a lot of the film have an idea of how they want their films but its hard to show people with something like that.
 
This is awesome! You two definitely have a creative talent for comics, and I'm going to bookmark this page! In the future, would you ever consider getting it published through Bungie/343 or would it solely remain as a web-comic? Just curious to see if you ever planned on taking it to the next level.

Thank you very much - glad you like it! Any official recognition from 343 at all would of course be an amazing dream come true for us, but for now we're just focused on making the best possible webcomic we can. I will say that we are making every possible effort to ensure that it fits within the established Halo canon. Thus, while we might add a few things like a new weapon or something here and there, the story shouldn't conflict with the official narrative.

Depending on the specifics of Microsoft's Game Content Usage Rules, we might set up a Patreon page for it too. Patreon encourages offering perks for patrons, so printed versions might be something we could offer in that capacity.
 
any chance do you think he'd do story boards for the fan films? if not I understand because I know a lot of the film have an idea of how they want their films but its hard to show people with something like that.

I love fan films! Are you working on any?

Our artist certainly shares my love of Halo and the fan films, so the interest would be there, but he also has quite a lot on his plate right now, so whether or not he could is a big 'if'. It would all depend on the specifics, really. If you have ideas or requests, go ahead and PM them and we can at least talk about it.

One other thing we do though is a monthly feature on a Halo fan project. We want to organically grow it into a pretty good database of all the awesome Halo fan projects out there. So if you have a fan film or other project you'd like to see featured, send us a message and we can discuss that too. We just put May's feature out on The Fallen: A Halo Fan Film, which is looking like it'll be amazing!
 
okay i'll do that and yeah the fallen is shaping up pretty good wish they had a date set to upload.

Thanks a bunch! I have a final tomorrow to cram for, so I'll probably get back to you tomorrow evening some time.

In the meanwhile, why not pass the time with our latest installment, Page 15 which just came out today!

Issue 1, Page 15.jpg

Also, The Fallen does finally have a rough release date. Nothing specific, but they have someone new whose taken over supervising post-production (they were stuck for a while since all their VFX people were too busy with their day jobs). They've been plugging away and are making it known that it's coming out later this year.
 
Hey, all! We're still going strong with Aeolian Hope. We're up to Page 19 of Issue 1, and are just over the halfway mark for said issue. You can catch up here. We've also launched a Twitter account where you'll find our most up-to-date updates (haha), as well as a Patreon page where you can help support us. We're working on it regardless of financial support, and it will always be free, but backing us on Patreon will help us put out more content more often (up to two new pages a week instead of 1-2 per month currently), and you'll get some cool perks for yourself while you're at it!

Thanks to everyone who reads it, and to the rest, we hope you'll take some time to check it out. =)

Here's a few panels from our more recent work:

Page 17, Panel 6.jpgPage 17, Panel 7.jpgIssue 1, Page 18.jpgPage 19, Panel 3.jpg
 
well its good to hear you've not been dark and just waiting to upload, plus have you though about turning this comic into a live action yet?
 
well its good to hear you've not been dark and just waiting to upload, plus have you though about turning this comic into a live action yet?

Thanks! What we have planned once the fighting starts would probably be prohibitive to anything but a Hollywood budget. We'd love to do some live action teasers/trailers for it though, like the games do. I'm also trying to get support for something on the Halo Archive.
 
you don't need a Hollywood budget just a lot of 405th guys with the skills you need.

Ha, yes that is literally every single Halo fan creator's dream. I know the 405th guys probably get bugged a whole lot for just such a purpose. That's part of the reason I'm trying to start a prop library. It'd allow fan film-makers to do a lot more, and it'd let interested prop-makers contribute without pressuring those who don't want to.
 
same here, btw way one of the hardest things to do is find CGI artist that would do the job's on cheap, I know the guys doing GOTA's are doing stop motion for covenant but it would be nice to have someone throw in a couple hundred grunts charging you. lol.
 
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