[Rated T-13]

Welcome to Zootopia, where anyone can be anything!

…unless you happen to be a predator. Then you’re forced to wear a shock collar in case you go “feral”.

For quite a while, that was the premise of the movie. It’s the world we could have gotten. There’s still an impressive amount of concept art from this stage of the movie’s development that shows a glimpse of a very different world. A world where Nick was arrested for running an illegal theme park exclusively to let predators indulge in their “wild side”. A world where Judy is a hard-boiled, by-the-numbers type of cop who genuinely thinks that predators would be savage all the time without shock collars.

Written by a person known as Witty, Zistopia takes that idea and explores it further, keeping designs and story elements close, but not necessarily identical, to the original plot. It’s done in an art style that’s so sketchy and obviously hand-drawn that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s made entirely of lost storyboards. The expressions, the jokes, the writing, all of it is excellent. I can’t recommend this series enough.

You can check it out on its own dedicated website, zistopia.com, or on Tumblr, where it was originally posted. If you want a direct link to the start of the story, click HERE. It just finished Act 1, so now’s the prefect time to get caught up.

Welcome to Zistopia. Enjoy your stay.