An in-depth animation breakdown of Incompetent Elytra Pilot, a Minecraft-inspired short, covering story origins, workflow, timing, backgrounds, and production lessons.
Incompetent Elytra Pilot - A Minecraft Animated short film
After defeating the Ender dragon and 5000 blocks from the portal, the quest continues on the hunt for the most ultimate of special items.
The Elytra.
However the gruelling quest finding it is one thing, using it, well that’s another story.
After successfully completing The General and King of Hearts, I decided to tackle a much larger project — 120 seconds long, with around 1,900+ frames across 28 shots/scenes, compared to the previous 20-second single-shot sequences. This also meant it took much longer to complete. The whole project took around 100 hours over six weeks and covered a lot of material I had never encountered before.
Firstly, there was much more planning involved: timing, layout, audio recording and mixing. I also spent a lot of time in Minecraft just watching how Shulker Boxes animate. Despite appearing quite difficult to reproduce, I ended up using a much simpler technique.
There were a few other challenges to overcome as well. One six-frame sequence required a zoom in and upward movement, which meant the entire background had to be redrawn on every frame to adjust for perspective changes. However, by reducing the sequence to only six frames and having it move so quickly, it creates the illusion that far more is happening than actually is.
Believe it or not, this is actually a true story — well, an in-game true story.
During a live stream on Twitch, playing Minecraft with my daughter, we defeated the Ender Dragon for the first time and discovered that the ability to fly could be obtained using an item called the Elytra. (Elytra is based on the real-world “elytron,” defined as each of the two hardened wing cases of a beetle.)
These are not easy to obtain. They’re found in “End Ships” floating around End Cities in a dimension called The End, which only becomes accessible through a small portal that appears after the Ender Dragon is defeated.
Once located, the safest way to access the ship is by building up from the ground using blocks of your choice. Sounds straightforward — however, these cities are surrounded by Endermen and heavily guarded by an enemy called a Shulker. If you’re hit by a Shulker bullet, it causes you to float upward for several seconds, and once the effect wears off, you plummet back to the ground.
I eventually found one of these cities and ships and finally got my hands on the coveted Elytra. Guided by Twitch chat, I equipped it and was given a brief rundown on how to use it — basic controls and timing. I walked to the edge of the ship and jumped.
In a panic, unable to get the flight to engage, I hit the ground and lost everything.
In most cases, this sends you back to spawn in the Overworld (the main Minecraft dimension). Which means gathering enough equipment again, travelling to The Nether, returning through the End portal, retracing your steps across The End, and making it all the way back to where you hit the ground — just to recover your gear and hopefully find somewhere safer to learn how to fly.
For me though, after an extensive mid-journey briefing from chat while travelling back to my death spot, I decided to climb the End City again and jump off a second time.
I got there eventually.
And over the following weeks, I developed surprisingly advanced flying skills.
But the story is a familiar one. Many players get the Elytra for the first time, fail to use it correctly, and are forced to make that gruelling journey back to recover everything they lost after hitting the ground.
Once the concept came together, the character was designed, and the storyboard completed, I moved on to working out the timing.
Normally, you would record all the audio first. However, I was still developing the idea and wasn’t sure how I wanted it to come together. So I loaded all the storyboard panels into Clip Studio Paint and stepped through the scenes, speaking the parts aloud as I adjusted the timing of each frame.
Incompetent Elytra Pilot - Storyboard
Once I had a rough pass, I exported a video and imported it into DaVinci Resolve. There, I recorded my voice parts and collected additional audio from in-game — footsteps, enemy sounds, a Shulker bullet hitting a shield, and so on. After building a rough audio track, I brought it back into Clip Studio Paint so I had both timing frames and audio to work from.
Using these as a guide, I then had to draw the backgrounds for each scene. The storyboard had been drawn from memory, so to make the scenes accurate, I spent a lot of time in Minecraft capturing screenshots that would work. This took far longer than expected, as it had to be treated like a film set.
For example, in the shot of the potions inside the End Ship, there was a wall blocking where I wanted the camera. To capture the correct angle, I had to remove the entire wall and switch to Creative Mode to position the camera properly.
Health Potions captured with wall removed (Left). Animated Scene (Right)
To keep the frames accurate and save time, I traced over large sections of the screenshots, simplifying forms and adjusting areas to better suit the shot.
Even working this way, it took a very long time. There were far more shots requiring detailed backgrounds than I had originally allowed for, and it began to feel endless as additional shots had to be added to clarify the story.
Once the backgrounds were complete, it was time to move on to character and enemy animation. Not entirely sure where to begin, I started at the beginning and worked my way through scene by scene.
On board the End Ship
There was also far more layer management involved than I had anticipated. I hadn’t initially accounted for characters moving between foreground and background elements, so extra layers had to be duplicated and separated to make that possible. The same applied to the Shulkers — even parts of their bodies required separate layers to animate correctly.
A sneaky 3 frame joke briefly flashes on screen in reference to childish naming of equipment
What began as a relatively simple idea turned out to contain far more detail than I had first envisioned. I suppose that’s just learning by doing — and now I carry that knowledge into the next project.
It also didn’t take long to realise that I should have animated each scene separately in Clip Studio Paint and then assembled everything in DaVinci Resolve. However, by that point I had already committed to building it as one large project file and I didn't have a clear idea on the process to start with. Instead, I adjusted my workflow by limiting playback to just the scene I was actively working on. That way, the software didn’t have to render the entire project every time I previewed an animation — which saved a significant amount of time and frustration.
During the process, my daughter had the idea of the Enderman picking up the Elytra I had dropped on death and flying off with it.
It instantly reminded me of the final scene in The Matrix, where Neo, having discovered his control over the system, flies upward and off-screen.
I thought it would be a fun way to end the animation — both as a visual gag and as a subtle nod to The Matrix. So I decided to add it as a post-credits scene.
You can see a comparison of the original Matrix ending below. I had sped up the Elytra Pilot version for pacing, so for this comparison I slowed my footage down to better match the original scene.
The Matrix / Incompetent Elytra Pilot End Scene Comparison - playback adjusted to match
This project started as a simple retelling of an embarrassing Minecraft moment, but it became something much larger. It pushed me technically, forced me to rethink my workflow, and taught me a lot about planning, timing, and scene construction.
Every project has that moment where you realise you’re in deeper than expected. This was one of those. And while it wasn’t perfect, it marked a clear step forward from the previous animations.
I have several larger projects to get stuck into however for now I need a break from Animation.
The youtube version can be found on the House of Normal Youtube Channel.
The entire process can be viewed from youtube below. This is a timelapse recording from Clip Studio Paint EX, 100 hours work condensed into 30mins.
The entire animation process in 30 mins.
Incompetent Elytra Pilot
Written, Animated and Voiced by
Damien K Quick aka House of Normal
Music
Funky Suspense
Music by Bensound.com/royalty-free-music
Artist: Benjamin Tissot
License code: ZX24MFGIJ1KF6ZWY
Closing Credits
Doing Damage
Music: Bensound.com/free-music-for-videos
Artist: Dollshade
License code: XKDDWXUEQIBR9X6J
This film was made possible with the support of
- Hard Dr Fuss -
Special Thanks to
Elderwolf569
Mammabearalwayz
NefTheLorekeeper
Rosanna & Suki
This Production is 100% Hand Drawn in Clip Studio Paint EX.
Software
Clip Studio Paint EX (2D Animation)
DaVinci Resolve (Edit and Audio Recording)
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