Dev Diary: German Empire in Vietnam (1967)
"Do Vietnam!" is a classic request we get all the time for our alt-history worldbuilding videos. To learn more about our mission, you can visit our About page. So, we decided: "do Vietnam," we shall!
The Scenario: A Three-Way Cold War
By 1967, the German intervention in Vietnam seemed to have been a strategic failure. Despite the deployment of tens of thousands of troops, the Syndicalist Vietcong and NVA (backed by the Left KMT) launched a devastating offensive that pushed German proxy forces to the brink. This project explores the question: What if there was a three-way Cold War? You can learn more about this specific timeline on our Cold War Project page.
Behind the Scenes: Art and Storytelling
As we experiment with new styles of storytelling for Kaiser Cat Cinema, you can expect to see us mixing media, including stock, 3D assets, and custom kitbashes, to bring this alternate history to life.
In this video, we open the story with the narrator in a helicopter. We then follow up with a series of classic Vietnam war movie shots, but reinterpreted with a German twist: the jungle Forward Operating Base (FOB), the helicopter scenes, the patrols, and the ambushes.
Designing the "Drache"
A lot of work goes into the unique aesthetic of our custom vehicles. For the helicopter featured in this project, we designed a mix between the German WWII Drache and the UH-1 Bell, with a bit of the Little Bird mixed in.
It is important to note that these custom vehicles only appear in our custom concept art. For the actual machinima and modded game footage, we utilize the free assets we can find to keep the production moving.
About the Author
Vincent 'VincentDN' De Nil is a Raleigh-based graphic designer and illustrator specialised in historically accurate world-building, flag design, and concept art. He is the founder of Flagmaker & Print, a custom flag manufacturing network producing world-class historical flag reproductions and historically inspired graphic design. Additionally, he is the founder of the Kaiser Cat Collective, a global collective of content creators creating historically inspired short film, comics, books and art.
ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/vincentdn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentdn/ Kaiser Cat Cinema: https://kaisercatcinema.com/about Flagmaker & Print: https://flagmaker-print.com/pages/about-vincent
Discover our projects
- Design & Print your own custom flag online: https://flagmaker-print.com/
- What if there had been an American Medieval age? https://american-kingdoms.com/
- What if there had been a Second American Civil War? https://dividedstates-project.com/
- What if WWII had happened in the 2040s? https://kaisercatcinema.com/s/about-ww2044
- What if there had been a three-way cold war? https://kaisercatcinema.com/s/about-coldwarproject