Pt. XII Got Yo'Self A Gun and Harris Is A Taint What's good, homies? Disculpame for the hiatus. So, Ghengis is the quintessential by-any-means-necessary kid. "Gangsta" the kids say. For his page, we wanted to start with a bang. Well, almost. This one took a bit to get right.

Pt. XI Momos and Podcasts You know... I've been completely remiss as I didn't talk about the story we wanted to tell w/ the comic or what we wanted to convey with Gloria's page. Story wise, we decided on an abridged version of the start of the war and where the characters were at the time.

Now it's time for a Taisho Era Secret. My bad, just saw the Demon Slayer movie over the weekend. Next up, momos and a podcast. As always, appreciate the eyes. Peace and Blessings!

Pt. X Oppa Manga Style! There I was minding my own when I was accosted by a life-long friend... Kevin. Always the staunch proponent for Solstice, he was keen to see it translated to other mediums. Kevin's first love was comics. His father passed on a massive collection to he and his brother.

Once more... THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! Your resident writer, filmmaker, sometimes actor, podcaster and Dungeon Master. Next up in Pt. X, Kevin asks, "Have you ever thought about turning Solstice into a comic book?" And who's Kevin?

We did a VFX test where we inserted one of the motherships from District 9 in the final shot. Here's how that turned out. Oh. Ignore the audio sync and color grading on this one. It was only a test.

Pt. IX During the casting process for Gloria, we narrowed it to two young ladies who really nailed the part, Bruna & Alex Michon. Bruna was really great but skewed a little older than 16. Alex was amazing, was actually 16, looked it, & had these large, expressive, brown eyes. We found our Gloria.

Pt. VIII We’re gonna do it live!! As we as artists evolved, so our work had to. Could that have sounded anymore pretentious? *shrug* Up to this point, we'd imagined Solstice in only two dimensions, well, three but animated, nonetheless. Rather shortsighted of us, wouldn’t you say? The question...

“Thanks for following along!” he said to the millions who were surely engrossed in this riveting saga.

All the other characters I’ve introduced you to are still supporting but we didn’t get the chance to reimagine them before what came next — Solstice goes live-action.

We also wanted Magellan to look more like a kid. Oh! That reminds me. Don’t think I gave ages for the crew. Magellan (16), Ill (18), Yeti (14), Ghengis (19), Gloria (16), Burr (60). Sadly, Furball is gone. But it’s living on a nice farm in Upstate New York, now.

Since we were reimagining characters, a thought struck me. The ratio of males/females was off. Not that we needed symmetry but… We had already reimagined Yeti’s look but what if Yeti wasn’t a guy but still presented as male? Or even further, nonbinary? In the end, we agreed on the latter.

It was decided. Gloria Escalante would be our unassuming leader of the GLO. So, Rod got to sketching. She needed to have an air of innocence about her; someone you wouldn’t imagine holding a gun let alone killing. An anti-badass, if you will. And this is her…

PT. VII Gloria. We asked — What if we had this girl, this shy child forced into war like so many others? A wisdom that belies her youth. A quiet fierceness in her eyes. Under normal circumstances, she lives a relatively quiet life. But destiny has a way of interrupting our normal circumstances.

Once again, if you've read this far, I would recommend counseling. But thanks anyway. See y'all for Pt. VII!

We had the other characters you saw, but felt like we were missing one, one we hadn’t created yet. This whole time, the picture of the girl with the gun and bike (in the child soldier pics) had stuck with me. There was just something about her, something in her eyes. Then it came to me..!

Then the Graals also went through several iterations. Believe it or not, we still haven't settled on a distinct visual design for them.

Wait. I promised another old school baddie. At least I think I did. This was Galdaan Makt, one of the Imperium generals. The art for his counterpart, Galdaan Vekt, has sadly been lost to time. Both served under Laaram Gemalk, whose art has also been lost.

Then Burr...

Then Yeti… who actually got… cartoonier? …cartoonisher? Anyway, Rod just liked the idea of this squat, Tasmanian Devil of a kid. So, he stayed that way… for a while. We went with the last pic on the right.

Then Ill. The “bilt” was dropped because we no longer wanted a name that alluded to the character’s weight. It was an unnecessary and problematic identifier.

Then Ghengis. We were satisfied with him on version 1.

More Magellans. Rod ultimately hits on the one he likes the best, which you'll see in the group pic later.

Next he lasered in on Magellan who went through several iterations.

…Rod grabbed a blowtorch and a pair of needle-nosed pliers (and a digital pen) and went to work on the characters. We wanted the characters to have stronger character and be a little less cartoonish than before. That makes sense to everyone, right? Some sketches. (Yeti, Ghengis, Ill, Magellan)

He starts working at this 3D animation company (not sure I can name it). But they loved the original art and wanted to try and get that picked up to series. They push it and him pretty hard. A couple of years pass, there’s some interest but ultimately no buyers. So, we picked up where we left off.

Yes. War is terrible and it’s even worse when kids are holding the guns. While this was grave subject matter, we didn’t want to lose all the levity and we definitely wanted to keep Rod’s style which had evolved throughout all of this. Around this time, Rod gets a new job.

We had to first decide what gritty/dark meant in the context of Solstice. Time went by. Ideas came & went. Till one day we focused on the child soldier angle. I mean, these were kids fighting a war. Research on child soldiers went down a tragic rabbit hole. Here are some of the tamer pics we found.

I mean, I'm the person who always wants to know more about the villain than the hero. So, the question became, how do we switchtrack to a darker/grittier tone & make that align with Rod’s more cartoony style? Let's be clear, this wasn’t really about HBO. They just catalyzed what was already there.

Pt. VI. Hello, Darkness, my old friend. Apologies for the multi-day hiatus. I ate turkey on T-giving & just woke up. Tryptophan is a beast. Now, where was I? Yes, Australia! Nope. Oh. Post-HBO pitch meeting. HBO wanted gritty/dark which coincidentally was more in my wheelhouse at that time.

As always... Thanks for following along with this Bluesky series that no one asked for!

We walked away & kept walking right on into the Pacific. Okay. We didn’t. But we thought about it. That ain't all we thought about. We contemplated completely flipping the tone & vision of Solstice. But would we allow the words of one development exec to alter our trajectory? Find out in Pt. VI.

“That was great, guys. Let me show you something.” One VHS tape and 30 minutes later, we were through the 1st episode of the animated Spawn series. “Whatta ya got like that? Can you do Solstice like that? Gritty? Dark?” Sure? Didn't even get our complimentary bottled water. We felt sad.

We were greeted by an exec in their newly minted animation dept. He had shorts on. He chuckled at our suits. We felt bad. We then pitched theee DOPEST pitch in the history of pitchstivity and readied our hands to sign the multi-million-$$$ contract they were hastily about to slap onto the desk.

Now that we had our pitch ready to see. We loaded up our bags, and we flew to Beverly. Hills that is. Traffic. Suspicious cops. Santa Monica, actually. But that breaks my unamusing reference. Let's go. We headed into HBO HQ in 3-piece suits, so fresh and so clean. Our big break was finally here.

Satire & parody were the genres du jour. I wrote a pilot script. Not great. We riffed on religion, government, military, cults, Menace II Society, a shot-for-shot albeit abbreviated parody of Full Metal Jacket's 3rd act with the graals as the marines. And Gloria dies. Who’s Gloria? We'll get to her.

Pt. V – Go West, young men. For comedy? Rod’s art style used to lean heavily into the western cartoon aesthetic. It still does, but it used to, too. He’s evolved his style since which you’ll see later. At that time, in our eyes, it lent itself more to comedy. Adult Swim not regular Nickelodeon.

Before we get into Pt.V, I found some of the art we did for the suns. This isn't the OG hand drawn art, but what we used to see how it would all work. Some of you #astrophysicists out there can tell me if this is even conceivably workable, keeping in mind the sci-fi of it all. #astrophysics

So, we had our heroes, our villains (More to come. Remember I said Khali needed a proxy?) and our world. But what was the overall tone we wanted Solstice to have? In Pt. V, I'll chop that topic. Oh. And our meeting with HBO. Thanks for following along!

The first iteration of the world was very much allegory. A militarily superior occupying force that allows only the thinnest threads of normalcy to exist. There were stores, restaurants, bars, other businesses. People had jobs, and more or less lived their lives, trying to stay out of the fighting.

So, that's the whole crew. Well, almost. The most important character is still to come. Together they would make up the GLO or Global Liberation Organization. An oppressed people fighting the unknown whims of a ruthless regime. Ironically, the pic doesn't include the whole crew. But we have FURBALL!

Castro is newly joined to the GLO. Not much is known about him except him somehow made the trek from Miami to NYC while the war was raging… alone.

Other than sharing Ill’s love of Hip-Hop, we didn’t really do much with Daed. He looked dope, though.

Tobias is super laid back and is the consensus coolest of all the crew. If you needed to unwind/relax/mellow out man, it was implied that he might have just what you need. Now that I’m looking at him again, he does have a very Cheech and Chong vibe.

Teemu was a former high school rush player. He’s our big, strong/tough yet gentle giant trope… I mean, guy.

Neely was a tool. A constant tinker, he had nearly any tool needed to accomplish the task at hand. Weapon repair, explosives, vehicle salvage, clogged disposal, he’s your boy.

Ionico is the coordinator of the crew. She helps plan out their robberies/ on their enemies/Doesn’t hesitate to squeeze/to get their lives outta danger. Seriously. All movement, attack plans, etc. go through her.

Iku was our little Dora Milaje. A straight badass and quiet killer who lets her weapons speak for her. She enjoys hunting lone graals, setting ambushes and traps and moonlit raft rides along what used to be Broadway.

Ganymede, half-human, half-Tpgyaan. Don’t ask me about biological logic here. After the war began, G shunned his alien heritage. He hates his father & Tpgyaan mother for what they made him. But he's a good fighter & goes out of his way to back his friends to make up for the Rekhaarum’s sins.

Burr's the elder, the mentor. An old man by the kids' standard but knows how to war. Burr's a distant relative of Aaron Burr but hates it if anyone mentions it. He can be addle-brained at times, but when it comes to puttin’ lead downrange, he's second to... quite a few actually. But he's seen some--