THE “DEATH STAR” SAGA… DUNDUNDUUUNNN!!

These days I’m mostly doing concepts and designs as practice for big projects, or if my eventual job involves conceptualizing. If I keep coming up with new ideas my imagination will stay healthy, because it gets regular exercise… This being the reason why I should start reading again.

Back to the topic.

I’ve been writing down concepts and making up series since I was in prep school – for the sake of foreigners in my audience: basically elementary school. Now, I would be all happy and boasting about this fact if it weren’t for the realization that most if not all of my series were largely unoriginal.

The few I can remember off the top of my head that were actually completely original are:

• Jono Zoom – which I speak about in this post.
• Ninja Cats – Though this is only a half-qualifier since it showed a lot of influence from Thundercats which had been running on the Cartoon Network at the time. I’ll probably go more into the Ninja Cats in a later post.

One of the least favorite of my old ideas was the Death Star series, a vague story about a motley crew of individuals from a bunch of different alien worlds being dubbed Death Stars and getting together to save their solar system from… Something. Destruction? I don’t friggin know.

I’m not entirely sure about the new story either. I believe there’s some kind of interstellar despot involved?… And maybe a tournament? Each planet chooses their best and brightest to represent them in a contest for their lives? Notice how I’m asking questions here? I’m just not sure.

I like these designs too. I’m not going to do anything with them most likely, but I still think they at least deserve a proper back-story. I will continue to work on it. Also I think I’m gonna change the name to Star Savers. Not only is “Death Star” an unoriginal name, it’s a misleading one too. The name Death Stars make them sound like villains.

It consists of 9 heroes from 9 different worlds; each one vastly different from the other.

The monk Kar Dio from the chilly Planet Mente, the war hero Grizzlion from the scarred Planet Ross, the mechanical marvel Ducois from the divided Planet Servol 20 (drawn but not pictured), the king of the skies – all skies – Tein Bova of the windy Planet So Ar, etc, etc.

I probably gonna bring them all up race by race once I finish them all, cuz to tell you the truth: I’m having a lot of fun with these guys.

My favorite so far is the Rossians because of the relationship that they’ve built with some of the planet’s fauna. There’s – what can best be described as – a type of mollusk on Ross called a Baquelez. For centuries the Rossians have used the Baquelez as containment devices or as holsters, while the Baquelez have become domesticated, and are fed by their owners. The pictures I have of them so far are too small so I couldn’t get a good one, but the swirly things on Grizzlion that look like an alien utility belt are actually Baquelez curled up around various items of his. They produce a sticky fluid that helps keep them things fastened to them when they’re being used as holsters. For example in the image above Grizzlion is drawing some kind of gun from a Baquelez that had curled its body around it, keeping it in place.

Here are two Rossian women chatting about the day's happenings while letting their Baquelez roam (right). If used in a casual setting, Baquelez are usually worn as living bracelets.

Species mutualism is an interesting concept, and it helps distinguish this planet from the others.

I should be doing more of these in the future.

But until then

Ciao