About

This is the (fairly lengthy and detailed) saga of how the Cloud Run universe came to be! I've split up the story across several sections so it's not one big huge long boring intimidating chunk of text. Click on a heading to show or hide the text underneath!

More about me as an artist

I've always been an artist and a creative writer, with what I like to think of as a dripping faucet of creative ideas coming out ever since I was young. I've also always been interested in reading cartoons and comics and making my own. When I was little, every drawing I would make usually had some sort of caption or speech bubble that went along with it, and every written story had an illustration or picture of some sort! It was in middle school that both my creative writing and comic designing (drawing? writing? it's a combination of both, so I'm never sure what verb is appropriate) really took off. Ever since then, I've written oodles of poems and short stories, drawn zillions of doodles, and, among other art projects of all sorts, created a whole bunch of comics. I think of myself as a graphic designer, creative writer, artist in general, draw-er both digital and by hand, poet, lyricist, and comics author/creator.

In high school, my projects only increased in scope; my school gave us lots of opportunities for creative project formats, which I eagerly pushed to their limits! A teensy sampling of my past projects have included a 22-page graphic novel I drew and colored by hand for school in 8th grade, a 12-page fanfiction graphic novel created digitally with Google Drawings for fun in 10th grade, and a collection of over 170 hand-drawn coloring pages and activity pages -- 23 coloring books' worth -- for both school and fun, made across 9th and 10th grade. (If you're interested in the coloring pages, I'd be happy to share them with you!) Currently, I'm thinking of majoring in studio art at college, and I'm hoping I can find some way to do some big grand graphic novel or comic-related project!

In 10th grade, I digitally made a picture book about natural selection for a biology class assignment, and I realized I had a knack for creating graphic work that explained a concept for educational purposes. The didactic nature of some of the comics in the Cloud Run universe stems from this. I was on the lookout for any opportunity I had to make more educational infographics or picture books, or even comics…

Part 1. Aviation comics

I started learning how to fly in the summer between 10th grade and 11th grade. I had so many incredible once-in-a-lifetime experiences, I wanted to document them for myself, and I ended up drawing a bunch of autobiographical comics that depicted moments in my first flying lessons I wanted to remember. I also wanted to remember the sheer amount of important lessons and tidbits of aviation wisdom I had learned, so I made some educational comics too that told embellished accounts of one of my flying lessons, usually with some puns and jokes thrown in for comedic effect. I fantasized that I could keep the project going and keep making more of them, and maybe share them online for others to use for educational purposes. These comics were all drawn by hand, and unusually for me, with pencil. An example of one of the more lighthearted ones has me remarking to my flight instructor "I just flew all the way here from New York City, and boy, are my arms tired!" with my flight instructor replying, "Well, then, you must have forgotten to set the trim." (Long story short, trim is something you can set on one or more flight controls in a plane you're flying so you don't have to tire out your arms and legs holding the controls in place for the whole flight.)

Also while learning how to fly a plane, I was exposed to many haunting and incredible stories I wanted to tell, and I longed to put my own artistic and hopefully educational renditions of them on paper. Some of those eventually became comics in the Cloud Run universe, such as "Impossible", "Left Behind", and "Blanket Of Wispy Gray". But I had no idea at the time that I would ever create the Cloud Run universe.

Around this time, I also stumbled across the comic strip Chicken Wings (https://www.chickenwingscomics.com/), a comic strip about an overconfident and accident-prone pilot and his misadventures working for an equally silly small airline. I found that strip both educational and hilarious, and I learned a lot from it, mostly through seeing what not to do and the consequences that would come of it! This reinforced my appreciation of storytelling as a way to get an educational message across. The art style of Chicken Wings ended up influencing a lot of the Cloud Run universe -- see the FAQs for more on this. The makers of Chicken Wings also make comics about moments in aviation history where they reimagine the epic moment in question as having silly elements involved, and those were the primary inspiration for the comics in the Cloud Run universe that show the ghost airplane retroactively inserting itself into history, Forrest Gump-style. (For example, they did a Manfred von Richthoven one in 2017 that definitely inspired the comic from this universe "Albatross Volant Gules" and perhaps even elements in "Last Wish".)

Part 2. The origin of the ghost airplane

Completely unrelated to flying lessons or any other creative project I had going at the time, I wrote a ghost story about a character I invented, the ghost airplane. That ended up being the origin of the ghost airplane character as it presently appears in the Cloud Run universe! Here's the saga.

In April 2020, I read a comic from the webcomic Dinosaur Comics that discussed the real phenomena of ghost ships (a ghost ship is when a ship is found adrift with the crew mysteriously dead or missing, such as the Mary Celeste or the recent, less mysterious Ryou-Un Maru) but concluded that "even in the heady realm of fantasy", the main character "couldn't see how a ghost airplane could happen". Here's a link to the comic in question: https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1351 (Incidentally, there actually is indeed a real-life phenomenon known as a ghost airplane that is analogous to a ghost ship! Well, kind of. It's when everyone on board dies or is incapacitated, but the autopilot keeps flying the plane until it runs out of fuel. But those only last for hours rather than days or weeks. Wikipedia lists at least eight instances when this actually happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_plane) That strip from Dinosaur Comics got me thinking of what it would be like if there actually was a ghost airplane -- not the spooky phenomenon, but rather a legendary creature or spirit/ghost/entity of some sort, inspired by the concept of a mysterious plane that flew by itself. As a creative writer and fanfiction author, I thought to myself, "Challenge accepted." 😉 I proceeded to write a short ghost story inspired by that comic that features a nameless, mysterious entity known only as the ghost airplane. That story was about five pages long and was meant to stand alone.

The ghost airplane character from that ghost story eventually became the ghost airplane character in the Cloud Run universe. In that 5-page standalone short ghost story inspired by Dinosaur Comics, it was very different from the being it since became, but it had the following similarities:

Is elegant, extremely dignified, formal, aloof to some degree, and possibly kind of stuck-up.
Can turn incorporeal at will.
Does not think especially highly of humans and regards them with neutrality rather than love. Thinks very highly of human laws, such as those of the FAA, and holds pilots to them.
Goes around saving pilots who would have died in aviation accidents through no fault of their own… and leading closer to death hubristic pilots who always manage to cheat fate and get away.
One of its tricks for saving people is appearing to them as a military plane that's intercepting them, and then leading them to safety away from a danger that they only discover much later after they've landed. (This later became part of Emilio's backstory, as told in the main Cloud Run story!)
Has a checkered past and is haunted by the times when it tried to save someone but failed to do so. (This later became "Last Wish", etc.)
Regular humans tell stories about it, and knowledge of its possible existence is widespread, but belief in it is not universal. It is regarded as a legend that may or may not be true. (The ghost airplane does not take offense at not being believed in.)

So, as you might be able to tell, a lot of the basis for the Cloud Run universe character of the ghost airplane was laid in that short story I wrote in April 2020.

Part 3. The original/main Cloud Run story

That short ghost story in which I invented the ghost airplane character was one I wanted to come back to and extend sometime. In September 2021, I finally got my chance. I was doing some miscellaneous creative writing, and I wrote a series of aviation-themed ghost stories -- I thought it would be interesting and funny to invent tongue-in-cheek folklore and superstitions about something created barely more than a hundred years ago that is usually thought of as grounded in science. But then again, that never stopped people from invention such superstitions about it -- after all, ask a pilot why a plane never seems to work and they'll tell you "because she's not in the mood today" or "ah yes, the gremlins are at it again". We already blur the line of what's magic and what's not; surely it's not a stretch to imagine more magical goings-on that might take place amidst the world of aviation? (There's more on this in the FAQs… and don't call me Shirley.) In any case, I had a lot of fun writing those aviation-themed ghost stories, and I decided to bring back in the ghost airplane as a recurring character in them.

I was still figuring out what kind of entity the ghost airplane was -- it's still kind of amorphous! -- and while trying to develop it further, I imagined a series of rituals associated with it. One of those rituals was a "cloud run", in which a dying pilot would summon the ghost airplane to fly with them on a fly-in with all their friends, specifically flight instructors and their students, and the ghost airplane would lend them all some of its magic so they could fly at much higher altitudes than they normally could, match each others' speeds regardless of aircraft type, etc. Finally, the ghost airplane would take away some of its magic and let the flight instructors temporarily succumb to hypoxia while the students take the plane down safely, to symbolize the passing of the torch to the next generation and the circle of life, while the ghost airplane would wake the pilot who summoned it right on their final approach to landing, flying off above them into the sunset in a flurry of sparkles as all the human participants reunited and celebrated with a party. The catch was that the pilot in question who summoned the ghost airplane would die soon, usually within the year. (That curse element was inspired by the horror movie The Ring. Other elements of it were inspired by the graphic novel Ghosts and the movie The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.) The description of a cloud run that I had written felt dry without any human characters, so I invented some and wrote a version of it featuring them -- and that is what became the main Cloud Run story in this universe. I thought of Tim and Jenna first, then the five main flight instructors and their students, Michiko, Ed, and Anna, and the rest of them just flowed from there. (In the main Cloud Run story in this universe, the ghost airplane reveals to Moe a twist on the curse as I had originally imagined it! But otherwise, it's pretty much exactly the same as the outline of the cloud run ritual I had invented for the ghost story series.)

Part 4. Combining them!

So then I had written a story where a bunch of characters participate in this ritual called a cloud run to summon the ghost airplane. (It was a crazy story, and I still regard it as rather rambling and nonsensical compared to most other things I've written! Read it at your own risk.) I thought all of the characters could use some backstory and more adventures, not necessarily involving the ghost airplane at all, and I eagerly wrote some. (I wrote it all in the format of scripts to be turned into comics -- it was only in January 2023 that I realized it would take me too long to turn the original Cloud Run story into a full-length graphic novel, so then I started turning it into prose.)

Since then, the original Cloud Run story has taken a backseat to all the other shorter (and less weird) comics I've created since that take place in the same fictional world with the same characters. They have formed the bulk of this universe, with roughly 30 of the ~100-ish planned comics complete. And more are still to come! The Cloud Run universe is the largest and most long-term project I have ever worked on, with enough content to support over 4 books' worth and crash a Google Doc (see the behind the scenes tab of this website for that story!). There's a twisted beginning of multiple strands that started this whole project, and there's no end in sight. And you're welcome to add more to the story with your own fanfiction and fan art!

Timeline

Color coding: Public showings / Behind the scenes entry milestones / Inspiration / Creation of the Cloud Run universe / Other

March 8, 2020: I've drawn comics and been a fan of airplanes all my life, but it is on this day that I write "The Breakup", my very first comic ever about aviation. (It's about an anthropomorphic plane and cloud in a turbulent relationship!)
April 2020: I read a comic strip from Dinosaur Comics that fancifully imagines the existence of ghost airplanes, and I get inspired by that comic to write a short ghost story about a ghost airplane character.
Roughly summer 2020: I discover the comic strip Chicken Wings, which has since provided tons of inspiration for what the Cloud Run universe has become today!
July 2021: I start taking flying lessons, and I write some autobiographical comics to remind myself of things I learned, in the hopes that I can extend them to be educational comics for a larger public. They become more fictional and humorous over time. That and the educational aspect eventually get merged into the comics of the Cloud Run universe!
September 2021: I write some aviation-themed ghost stories and I bring back the ghost airplane character I had previously invented. I invent a ritual involving the ghost airplane called a cloud run, and starting on September 13th, 2021, I remake the version of that story with human characters to flesh it out. This later becomes the original/main Cloud Run story in this universe!
September-October 2021: I make up a whole bunch of backstories and other adventures for the human characters I had invented for the main cloud run story, and I realize that the side stories can support a whole universe, in which the original Cloud Run story is just a part. I continue making educational aviation comics using the characters from the main Cloud Run story, especially the flight instructors. (From then on, the original/main Cloud Run story has taken a backseat to the other comics, with the comics being the main aspect of the Cloud Run universe ever since.)
October 31, 2021: First comic in the Cloud Run universe completed! ("Maurice's ground school class takes the cake")
December 20, 2021: I start making blurbs and collected info for each of the Cloud Run universe characters, with the intention that the public will one day read it.
February 24, 2022: I make enough behind the scenes entries that they justify their own Google Doc
July 31, 2022: I realize that I might one day make the Cloud Run universe publicly available online or something of that nature and I start keeping a rough digital record of the date I made behind the scenes entries (I had roughly 78 behind the scenes entries at the time!)
December 2022: I print out a bunch of comics and place them in a box to sell at my flying club, Advantage Aviation, at Palo Alto Airport. (Update: The box of comics has since been replaced with a display advertising this website (circa fall 2023), and yet later (circa summer 2024) by some business cards. Finally, as of December 2024, the display and business cards are no longer there, and 2 bound book compilations comprising 11 Cloud Run comics live semi-permanently on the shelf under the television.)
January 2023: I realize that the original Cloud Run story is way too long to bother turning into a full graphic novel as originally intended, and I start adapting it into prose.
March 27, 2023: First ever FAN ART!!! (Available as a behind the scenes entry!)
April 2023: I present the Cloud Run universe at my high school, with hard copies of bookmarks and other merchandise available, and I start thinking about possibly making a website for the Cloud Run universe someday. (The brochure from that event is available on the bonus material tab of this website!)
July 30, 2023: The amount of behind the scenes entries outgrows the amount of characters Google can support on one Google Doc, with over 272,032 words and over 1,509,240 characters across 687 pages (!). (Hence the awkward order-by-number system on the behind the scenes entries tab of this website -- go there for the full story!)
October 23, 2023: This website goes live! WAHOO! 🎉
December 29, 2023: 260 behind the scenes entries reached! (There were approximately 230 when the website was first launched.)
December 2023-January 2024: I start imagining and drawing sketches for the Crane & Sword comics universe, which might have been in part inspired by a behind the scenes entry for this universe wherein the ghost airplane anachronistically wishes salbutamol had been invented while caring for an injured WWI soldier.
January 13, 2024: 270 behind the scenes entries reached!
February 8, 2024: I present the Cloud Run universe at Reed College, with hard copies of comics available for purchase. (Photos from that event and its poster are on the photo gallery tab of this website!)
Circa February 14, 2024: Hard copy books are now available for purchase on the website!
March 21, 2024: After being approached by people wanting to know the link to this website on at least four occasions and writing out the link to this website by hand, I decide to make business cards to hand out for that purpose, and also to distribute at places I've sold and presented comics. (See the accompanying behind the scenes entry for a gallery of all of them!)
March 22, 2024: 280 behind the scenes entries reached!
March 30, 2024: I host a table at the Zine Fest at Reed College and give away business cards for the Cloud Run universe!
July 1, 2024: 290 behind the scenes entries reached
August 29, 2024: 300 behind the scenes entries reached
September 6, 2024: The glossary of aviation terminology is moved off the FAQs page to its own dedicated Google Doc after reaching 79 pages in length (!).
November 16, 2024: I host a table at the Deer Lodge Fest at Reed College and sell comics and give away business cards for the Cloud Run universe!
January 11, 2025: The Cloud Run characters start to become available on Artfight.net! My username is JustPlaneAwesome. (Date when they'll all be available on Artfight TBD, probably summer 2025!)
January 20, 2025: 310 behind the scenes entries reached
August 30, 2026: The Cloud Run universe will have been around for four years, eleven months, and two weeks (the amount of time Tim lives for after being diagnosed with cancer).

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