Eternity Kingdoms, Five Years In: A (Self) Retrospective on My Original Series Concept's Development

As of today (September 14th, 2024), my adventure/fantasy/dramedy Christian-adjacent* animated series concept Eternity Kingdoms turns five years old. If you've been following me for any period of time since I joined LinkedIn in March of 2020, you probably know at least a little about it. It's the story of three (later four) misfit "Chosen Ones" on a quest to defeat a generically-named Dark Lord and stop him from taking over their weird and wild fantasy world while sorting out their own personal demons.

*Christian-adjacent (adjective): a term for fiction crafted by Christians that possesses Christian themes, morals and underpinnings throughout the ongoing narrative. It's usually not explicitly Christian (unless you're CS Lewis; no disrespect meant towards Clive, but the Christian subtext of Narnia is practically text by the time you reach The Last Battle), allowing for non-Christian readers/viewers to enjoy it as a standalone piece rather than a thinly-veiled and extremely unsubtle allegory for the Gospel narrative (allegory was something Lewis's dear friend and mentor JRR Tolkien wasn't fond of). Examples of Christian-adjacent media includes Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), Lewis's "space trilogy" and his better-known Chronicles of Narnia, Wilbert and Christopher Awdry's The Railway Series (personal theory: Sir Topham Hatt is meant to represent God), and Andrew Peterson's The Wingfeather Saga.

It's honestly kind of shocking that I'm already 5 years into working on it. These last few years have been a blur (then again, that could also be courtesy of me growing older) and it feels like just yesterday I had the first few ideas for the show. Now I stand here with over 40 original characters designed, the first season planned out with 20 episodes in total, a series bible penned, a website designed, and a pilot episode script in the process of being revised.

Where Eternity Kingdoms is now is something I can only attribute to the grace and guidance of God Almighty. I'm grateful to Him for all that He has blessed me with and I'm certain that He'll continue to bless my silly little show concept and refine it into something more Him-honoring as time goes on. And today... I want to celebrate.

I want to look back at all (well, almost all; there are some things I'm not sharing here because they're spoilers) that's been done for EK's development over these last few years. It's probably going to be one of the most personal articles that I've penned in my four years on LinkedIn by the time it's all finished. So as I've said many times in many ways (as a tribute to obscure Transformers character Star Saber)...

Let's say go!

PRELUDE/YEAR 1: Wait, This is Going to Be a Thing Now? (2015-2019 and 2019-2020)

DISCLAIMER: Each "year" recorded here is from one September 15th to the next year's September 15th.

Ever since my baptism on Father's Day of 2015, I feel as if my imagination and analysis of storytelling greatly improved. Of course, God calls all Christians to be transformed and have our minds renewed by Him (Romans 12:2), but something just clicked after I was born again. I found myself more deeply analyzing the films and TV shows I watched and the video games I played (or at least watched other people play. I was new to this YouTube thing in 2015).

Eternity Kingdoms was not the first attempt I made at telling a Christian story. The first attempt was an Undertale and Mario and Luigi-inspired role-playing game concept that was tentatively titled "Sky Story". It was about God creating a secondary invisible world above Earth but below Heaven that served as a middle ground between our current sinsick world and the new Heaven and new Earth foretold by the apostle John in 90 AD. Looking back on it, there's a lot of creative DNA that was carried over into EK.

The main cast consisted of a humble lad based on the Japanese mythological figure known as Issun-boshi (little dude), a normal shrub named Jeff (inspired by the burning bush), a boisterous bruiser meant to be a teenage version of Japanese god of thunder Raijin, and a joyful robot lady who was also a pop star. There were major differences from the quartet I'd end up with in 2019, but I can see where some of the basic aspects of some of their personalities came from.

It was admittedly very derivative of Undertale's morality system and subversion of RPG terminology as well as somewhat synchrenistic in terms of faith (I cast other Japanese deities as equals to the Godhead and didn't really have a firm grip on God's sovereignty when I was writing its story), but it was a start. I worked on "Sky Story" for about a year and then cast it aside. It hasn't been forgotten entirely due to some elements bleeding into Eternity Kingdoms, but it's not something I intend to return to at this time.

Another idea I had was "Sword and Sheath", a show concept about a former pirate lass, an angel, a goober puma lady, a monotone butler/chef/medic very transparently inspired by Baymax (Big Hero 6), and a Sonic pastiche going on a Dragon Ball-inspired quest across their world under the guidance of "Kami", a being who was the Judeo-Christian God through a fantasy lens. Looking back on it, this was closer to what Eternity Kingdoms ended up being. The pirate girl and angel from this ended up as Takoyaki and Lucian, and the teen Raijin and pop star robot lady from "Sky Story" ended up as Prodigus and Carouselle. But once again, I got bored with it and stopped working on it.

And that brings us to 2019- the year when my Steven Universe fandom was at an all-time high. I was fond of sharing my SU fan art with my classmates in high school- usually a fruitless effort, as my small town wasn't exactly home to the artsy-fartsy types. But there was a group of gals who I could count on to give me good feedback.

While they were impressed by my SU work and original characters tied to the show, one of them was sage enough to suggest that I tried my hand at making a fully original character. I took her up on that challenge, and I set home on February 12th to come up with something. And I did.

The idea was a circusy robot lady inspired by SU's Sardonyx (a coquettish, haughty "fusion" of two of the show's main characters). After a first sketch that left me somewhat unimpressed, I started again and drew up the very first version of Carouselle. Looking at her, her personality seemed to write itself- effervescent, caring, service-oriented. And with that... Carouselle was born.

With this first original character drawn, I... did nothing with her aside from occasionally revisiting her and designing some "partners" for her that shared her circusy aesthetic. I was still so entrenched in my Steven Universe fandom that I couldn't imagine drawing anything else. While it sounds like SU was detrimental to my development as an artist, it really wasn't.

If anything, Steven Universe was the best thing to happen to me from an artistic standpoint. The style was simple enough for me to imitate (and appealing enough to make me want to imitate it) but not so simple as to look amateurish. Sure, the show had a lot that was questionable even back when I was a SU diehard, but from a strictly visual standpoint, the show was a good teacher (you know, when the characters were somewhat on model).

After the release of made-for-TV musical Steven Universe: The Movie (arguably the best ending SU had), I got a whole surge of creative energy to work with. God got His mitts on me near the middle of that burst of artistic output and directed me towards creating something of my own. Carouselle was involved (now with a more defined personality and character, thanks to near-instant fan favorite villainess Spinel from SU), and I did some picking from my past Christian story ideas for other main characters.

The pirate lass from "Sword and Sheath" became frail, anxiety-ridden farm lass turned leader of the "Chosen Ones" Takoyaki; the angel from that same pitch became uptight vampire prince Lucian Evernight. The final member of this main quartet, Prodigus Lionheart, came out of my first viewing of The Lion King at age 17 (yes, really; it took me that long to watch one of Disney's best films), an obscure Transformers character by the name of Lio Convoy (well, not THAT obscure; he got a new toy in 2023), and the tale of the prodigal son as recorded in Luke 15. With Carouselle to round out this newly-created quartet, I had a main cast ready for a show concept.

September 14th, 2019 was the day that Eternity Kingdoms was officially "born". I started work on fleshing out the concept of the show. The following weeks saw the creation of the show's ultimate antagonist The Dark Lord, his underlings Futakuchi and General Termagant, the main quartet's mentor Solomerlin, Lucian's older sister Demeter and their parents Lord Evernight and Lady Jorogumo, bumbling thieves and adoptive father/daughter duo Etienne Noir and Kijo, ruler and denizens of circus kingdom Barnumia King Horn-Honker and Ding and Ring, and the Dark Lord's magic-created brat of a daughter Fia Darkmatter the First. Not only them, but I started work on a (now very much outdated) series bible for the show.

In my excitement to work on Eternity Kingdoms, I managed to write out a document that detailed what I saw as the necessary amount of seasons and episodes the show would need to be best told. While I still hold to my ideal length for the show being seven seasons of twenty episodes each, I believe that I'd jumped into waters I wasn't quite ready to swim in yet. There's a lot in that original episode list I didn't stand by even only a few months after writing it, and I believe that in retrospect, turning away from it was God's way of telling me that I'd gotten ahead of Him.

I celebrated Carouselle's first "birthday" in February of 2020, and with that led to further development of her character. I'd better fleshed out her backstory and given her a boisterous cowboy brother named Wayfarer as well as designed her in-universe creator. However, something I didn't see coming gave me an unexpected opportunity to better develop and refine Eternity Kingdoms.

That, of course, was the COVID-19 pandemic. Aside from the pains that it brought to the world that I'm certain many of you are familiar with, it gave many creative folk like myself time to either focus on their creative works more or start work on entirely new things. And with the opportunity of developing Eternity Kingdoms before me, I eagerly jumped at that chance.

A major step in Eternity Kingdoms's development that a lot of you probably don't know about is that I completely overhauled my style in 2020. Steven Universe's perfunctory sequel series Steven Universe Future had just ended, and as I was finishing up my last few celebratory drawings for the show's finale (I was still too caught up in the hype surrounding the show's end to really think critically about it), I decided to draw a few SU characters in a more realistic style. And wouldn't you know it, that change bled into EK rather quickly.

I made this change a few days before taking Eternity Kingdoms and myself to LinkedIn on March 31st, 2020. After much loving nudging from my father, I started using this platform to share my art- primarily my designs and some story details for EK. I didn't want my account to become more known for fan art than the thing I was most passionate about, and that's shaped how I posted since the start.

With the end of Steven Universe and the start of my time on LinkedIn, the Lord started a new era for EK. Many designs were streamlined, more characters were created, and I continued to work on fleshing out the series's world. I also reduced my plans for the show from working on all seven seasons to working primarily on Season 1 with a loose structure for the rest of the show in mind.

Honestly, that was one of the biggest God moments EK had in its early development. I originally wanted to do all seven seasons' episode lists, but I got bored with writing Season 2 and felt my original plans for Season 3 (which would've had a rail-powered kingdom full of narrow gauge living locomotives) were a bit too juvenile for what the show was becoming. I believe He was telling me to take it one step at a time- He held the show's future, and all I had to do was trust and obey, following Him wherever He called me.

After a summer of nonstop drawing and the start of my first semester at Ball State University , I celebrated EK's first anniversary... strangely quietly. There was good reason for that, though. My paternal grandfather was nearing the end of his life and I was struggling to get used to this whole college thing (especially during a worldwide pandemic). In retrospect, I had my focus on the right things.

However, the following year would be a very transformative year for EK in many ways...

YEAR 2: The Refiner's Fire (2020-2021)

Year 2 of Eternity Kingdoms began with the idea for an experiment. See, I was still doing bits and pieces of Steven Universe fan art around that period of time. Not only that, but my frustration with what She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (She-Ra 2018, as some call it) did to the more feminine side of the Masters of the Universe mythos led me to create what started off as a rewrite of She-Ra 2018 and gradually morphed into my own take on MOTU that I called "Masters of the Universe: Horde Saga" (read about it here ). And I sought to unite the three- but how?

I'd known of the art event of "Inktober" (drawing various themed drawings in ink, for those who don't know), and I wanted to do an art event of my own on LinkedIn. Unlike Inktober, my event would be all about interesting character pairings between EK, SU, and MOTU Horde Saga. This event, called "Crosstober", helped me to experiment with character poses and interactions while also allowing me to focus more on my college-level studies. By the end of the event, I'd made my style more my own and gotten many more eyes on EK- including a pair who helped shape the series for the better, whether he knows his place in the plans of God or not.

Once the inaugural Crosstober event was finished, I returned to doing my usual work on the show, continuing to refine character designs and expand the world. Y'know, business as usual. One night, I was busy drawing Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle when I received a messages notification from one of my connections- and it made my night.

This connection, who I shall leave nameless for privacy reasons, had done his own take on Carouselle. It was a looser, toonier take on her (perhaps reflecting her personality a bit more), but I could still recognize the design as that silly robot lady who indirectly started this whole thing. It is, without a doubt, one of the proudest moments of my artistic career and something I'm going to cherish for years.

Without wasting a minute, I drew up art of this connection's take on Carouselle interacting with the genuine article ("Wow! Are we long-lost sisters?" she said; this ended up oddly prescient considering Minty and Chamomile's existence). This gift of fan art affected how I drew her from then on, giving her longer cuffs behind her hands (which make sense from a technical standpoint; her original ring-shaped cuffs were too small to hold all the servos her hands would realistically need to function) and streamlining her proportions. Furthermore, it motivated me to redesign all four of the Chosen Ones.

I've gone over this primarily in Lucian's revised article (read here ), but I wanted to divorce my style from Steven Universe even more. I'd spent an entire year developing my skills, and I felt God pushing me to give the characters He'd given me to steward revised designs that reflected that. Carouselle had it rather easy- all she needed were some navy blue feet (shoes? I'm still not sure what those are) and smoothed out proportions.

Takoyaki's eyes were shrunken down and her lip was made a touch more pronounced, and Prodigus got a very basic design tweak in the form of kneepads. However, Lucian was the one who underwent the heaviest design rework, with his original Steven-inspired look being discarded in favor of something influenced by 1700s men's fashion. In the final day of an EK/Horde Saga/OK KO! Let's Be Heroes crossover event I did in the 25 days before Christmas 2020, I made the revised designs public.

2021 kept the refinement train going, with Wayfarer being given hips based on that generous piece of Carouselle fan art and Futakuchi and General Termagant being subject to many, many iterations. It also marked the start of me publishing articles on LinkedIn in order to get the word out about the show's concept and ultimate purpose. This was something I discovered while using LinkedIn's desktop form and decided to start things off with a simple article explaining who I was and what I believed EK would do.

I soon followed up that article with an article celebrating Carouselle's second birthday and made that the first of eight articles going through several of the show's main characters (and King Horn-Honker as well). Granted, I'm not terribly proud of some of those articles (Lucian's article and the one shared between Futakuchi and Termagant in particular), but writing them helped me to figure out some character intricacies and explain them in a way that the average LinkedIn person could understand. Standout articles from this period included Prodigus's article (link here ), the Dark Lord's article (link here ) and King Horn-Honker's article (link here ).

From an artistic standpoint, EK continued to expand as 2021 went on. I designed the rulers of a kingdom which replaced a Thomas and Friends-inspired kingdom full of living locomotives, Prodigus's older brother Cadogan, some upgraded forms for Carouselle and Wayfarer (intended for very late in the series), the daughter of the replacement kingdom's regents, and Carouselle's younger sisters Minty and Chamomile. I also excised some characters who I found to be rather superfluous at this point in the show's development- they might be brought back years later once the show enters production, but for now I'm leaving them on ice.

In sharp contrast to 2020's muted celebration of its first anniversary, I went into the week of September 15th, 2021 ready to celebrate all things EK. I shared Minty and Chamomile with the world for the first time, I did an homage to the previous year's Crosstober posts, I introduced the world to Carol (Carouselle's Barnumian look-alike) and I showed off some LEGO minifigure versions of the main quartet. To cap off the week of celebration, I published an article all about Solomerlin, fulfilling a promise I made earlier in the year to pen eight articles about EK's development.

Looking back on it, this was the year when I believe Eternity Kingdoms truly took off. I'd solidified many character designs that were originally far more loosey-goosey, I penned several articles that helped both me and you the reader to better understand the cast, and the show concept was closer to what I had in mind when I first created it. It was less "Christian equivalent to Steven Universe" and more "wholly original Christian series concept", and I was very proud of what the show was becoming.

YEAR 3: Spreading the Word (2021-2022)

The creative high from Year 2 continued immediately into Year 3 with the second annual Crosstober event. Due to my souring on Steven Universe in the year and a half since its ending and my dedication of an entire month earlier in 2021 to fleshing out MOTU Horde Saga into something more my own, I didn't want to repeat myself. Ergo, I selected two new franchises to cross over with Eternity Kingdoms.

In addition to my beloved Sonic the Hedgehog, I decided to throw in characters from the 2019-2022 Disney Channel animated series Amphibia. I'd become an Amphibia fan earlier in the year (binging all of Seasons 1-2), I was drawing the characters quite a bit, and I felt it would be a no-brainer to slot it in. Like Crosstober 2020, this event was another smash hit that helped me to bolster my artistic prowess further.

Once "Crosstober 2: Eclectic Boogaloo" wrapped up, I turned my attention towards writing out a Christmas special for EK set some time during Season 2. This special followed Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle's quest to learn why Takoyaki seems so hesitant to celebrate Christmas. While I enjoyed writing it and it helped me to better "hear" my characters' voices, it's something I feel suffers from major "early installment weirdness".

It used a licensed song and made a direct reference to Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (something that I'm very much against now; it distracts from the authenticity of the series' world if something from our world is there), it didn't use certain characters to their fullest potential, and it created some worldbuilding problems due to Christmas being called that despite the Christ analogue planned for the show not being given the title of Christ. However, I'm ultimately glad that I wrote it since, again, it was one of the first times I really got to tell a story within the EK universe.

2022 opened with "art business as usual" with the addition of intermittent LEGO minifigure depictions of characters outside of the main quartet. It wasn't long before Carouselle's 3rd birthday rolled around, and this time I dedicated an entire week to her and her siblings. I highlighted Carouselle's many inspirations, did a lot of pose experimentation for her, her brother and her sisters, and capped the week off with both a more fully rendered version of her and a simple poster of her celebrating her big day.

While not directly an Eternity Kingdoms thing, I decided to utilize the Dark Lord, Futakuchi, Termagant, and Fia in a story written for my Intro to Creative Writing college class (it was an elective for my TCOM/media major). Like the Christmas special I wrote back in 2021, this was a great way of figuring out how these characters would talk and/or act. It was honestly impressive that even divorced from their proper context of EK, these characters were still able to work from a writing standpoint.

March, in addition to highlighting some minor villains during a week of art all about baddies from a lot of my artistic endeavors, marked a major turning point for EK. That turning point was designing the show's depiction of Jesus Christ. Out of literally everything in EK, this was THE thing I couldn't afford to screw up. If I messed up my Jesus analogue's design, then the entire show wouldn't be worth doing.

So I spent much time ruminating on how I would design this "Emmanuel". Would he be half lamb and half lion (fulfilling both of Jesus's titles as described in Revelation 5?) Would he be human? I settled on the latter and decided to divide Emmanuel's design between four points in his being. The first, "The Messiah", was focused on Jesus's appearance during His earthly ministry. The second, "The Substitute", focused on Him crucified. The third, "The Risen" was Him in His resurrected body. The fourth and final, "The Eternal King", was Him as described by John in both Revelation 1:12-16 and Rev. 19: 11-16.

To my surprise, it was one of the smoothest design processes I think I've ever been through. I believe that God had His hand on me during the whole ordeal, and in doing so He guaranteed that my rendition of His Son was exactly what He wanted it to be. I couldn't have been happier with those designs once I was done with them.

After opening the year with an article dedicated to Demeter and following that up with an article shared by Wayfarer, Minty and Chamomile, I followed that up with two articles more focused on explaining aspects of EK to newcomers. One article was about questions that I expected people to ask suppose they came across my art for it scrolling through various tags on LinkedIn; the other was all about the prophecy at the show's core and my rumination on modern media's strange aversion to treating prophecy as a good thing.

I spent the summer continuing to flesh things out- design the Dark Lord, Futakuchi, and Termagant's pre-fall forms here (not sharing them here, though; they're BIG SPOILERS), design the relatives of Takoyaki and Prodigus there. In fact, I dedicated an entire week in July 2022 to showing off Takoyaki's parents and six brothers, Prodigus's older brother and father (who I'd designed before but redesigned because of dissatisfaction with the latter's design), and Carouselle's in-universe creator. The summer ended with an article dedicated to Etienne and Kijo... which ended up being my last EK development article until December.

One of the biggest accomplishments for Eternity Kingdoms was my assembling of a website using Google Sites that existed to promote the show. Admittedly, most of its data was carried over from the QnA article, but that information was critical to explaining what it was and why I wanted to make it. While there have been some things that have changed between when I published the site and the time when I'm writing this, I don't really feel a need to go back and rework much of it. It's still very true to what God has directed me to make this concept to be.

August 2022 started my time as a studio art minor, and with that came several improvements to and much streamlining of my art. However, due to my concerns about my class roster during the first semester of my junior year, I almost called off Crosstober for the year. I felt like I'd be so busy between my first real art class since high school, two religious studies classes, the last of my required Spanish classes (remember this for later), and an advanced screenwriting class that I'd have no time to do a full 31-day event.

Therefore, I decided to come up with a substitute event in case Crosstober 2022 was a no-go. This event, "Inspiration and Inspired", was dedicated to highlighting the primary cast of EK and their inspirations and lasted only 14 days... leading right into EK's third anniversary! It was a very fun way of celebrating EK's third year of existence and was the most in-depth I'd really gone on creating new art for one of its anniversaries.

All in all, Eternity Kingdoms year 3 was solid. While I didn't really push the show concept forward through new characters being created, it was still quite a productive time for its development and sharing what it was to people most curious about it. However, what I was failing to recognize was that I'd been turning the show into an idol, and God had plans to show me that within the coming months...

YEAR 4: Complacency and Conviction (2022-2023)

To my surprise, "Inspiration and Inspired" went very well and worked with my then-current college schedule. Ergo, I decided to put Crosstober 2022 back on the table, resulting in me mashing up my collection of characters with the monsters (and human) of Undertale (bringing things full circle, considering UT's influence on EK) and the freaky fab student bodies of Monster High (which my interest in was in the process of being reignited due to my disgust with the 2022-onward reboot). Right before the start of Crosstober, though, I decided to give Etienne a feline ex and thief masquerading as a country singer inspired by the many werecats of Monster High.

Like the prior two Crosstobers, this one was yet another runaway success. Thanks to what I was learning from my Drawing Studio class, many of the drawings were improved by my newfound studies of perspective and realism (even though it was still in my now-signature style). Looking back on it, this was one of my favorite Crosstobers to go through because each day allowed for me to flex what I'd been learning day by day. And to think it wouldn't have happened because of my fears that I'd slip up and miss my classwork...

Once Crosstober 2022 was done, I decided to implement something that I'd been batting around in my mind for a while. That something was a very slight redesign of Carouselle, trading her floating legs that had been part of her since her inception for legs that were merged with her person. This was done for the sake of making potential merchandise easier to design- I doubt the plush makers and action figure designers would be terribly pleased with me suppose a member of the EK main cast had to have their legs held on by either strings or clear plastic.

With Carouselle's revised design ready to roll, I returned to art business as usual. However, in the following weeks, I had a discussion with my father that got EK involved at some point. At that point in time, I was still fairly adamant that I needed to move out to California in order to have the best chances to "make it" in the animation industry. What's more, I was frustrated by his continued insistence that I needed to take more Spanish classes past those required for my major. Things reached a boiling point one day.

I argued against having to take more Spanish classes (I felt as if I'd done enough for my majors and wanted to move on from the Spanish language) and for moving out to California; he argued for me staying where I was and learning more about Spanish for the sake of the goals I had in mind for EK. If I truly wanted Eternity Kingdoms to share the Gospel with others, he reasoned, then I should learn the Spanish language so that the translation is the best it can be and so the Gospel can be shared with Spanish-speaking audiences the best it could. He also made it very clear that what I had in mind for the show could be entirely opposite to what God wanted it to be. I had this grand design for a seven-season epic, but He could have it go on for far longer or far shorter if He willed it to be so.

That conversation was a God-given dagger to my heart. I was so convinced that I was doing something right and Godly and that I had everything figured out, but... I didn't. I was clutching onto EK like a petutant child unwilling to give his broken toy to a caring Father Who would not only mend it, but make it better than the child could ever imagine it to be. I was scared of what He would turn EK into because I feared that it would be unrecognizable compared to what I wanted it to be (how foolish that thought was, really).

So I did what I knew He would want. I went to pray, and I gave Eternity Kingdoms back to God. I was done with walking around pretending that I knew how to run the show better than him, and from here on out I would let Him lead the show forward rather than me. If He pointed me towards character ideas and story concepts, then I would respond in faith and follow His commands. I needn't worry about where or when the show would be made; all I needed was to rest in His perfect timing and guidance.

Today is Giving Tuesday 2022, and I have something to say about my original series concept Eternity Kingdoms. It’s not really mine. God gave me the ideas for these characters, their story and their world. I know He has a plan to make it best glorify Him, and He will provide a way for it to enter production. I am not in control of its future; He is. The most I can provide for the show is to respond to His calling on my life in humble obedience. So you know what? I’m leaving Eternity Kingdoms’s future to God. I mean, I’ve said that I trust Him with its future before, but there are times when I’ve said it without really meaning it and thinking I knew how to engineer a success better than Him. But this time, I mean it. Eternity Kingdoms is God’s gift to me, and today I recommit it to Him so that He might best use it for His purposes.

With that, I actually put EK's development on something of a pause. Aside from intermittently working on the show's series bible and continuing to draw these characters God had given me to work with, the show took something of a backseat to a new series concept He'd blessed me with. This concept, Ex-Villains For Hire, began active development on December 9th, 2022, and became a priority of mine art-wise.

The last big developments from the remainder of 2022 included writing up an article about Fia and giving Lucian and Demeter revised wings to bring them more in line with their father and give them more bat-like wings. I also slipped Eternity Kingdoms's main quartet into my final project for my Drawing Studio class for my studio art minor, something I made a tradition as my undergraduate college career continued. All in all, 2022 was yet another solid year for EK, and I was very excited to go into 2023.

However, 2023 started off as a year where I put tons of development into Ex-Villains for Hire (as well as my other other show concept Integrated) while giving EK very little aside from my usual output. That being said, this year wasn't devoid of progress on EK. I brought back Prodigus's dark magic-borne evil clone Vessel from development purgatory and fleshed out his arc, I gave Solomerlin some grandkids and reworked an early character named Imani Charismata into his daughter, and I gave Futakuchi a revised outfit that better resembled a kimono and excised the gold that was previously on her person (it just looked too clashy with her purples, magentas and grays) as well as some dark magic-charged claws that came out of her razor-sharp nails.

May 2023 saw the release of an article dedicated to Lord Evernight and Lady Jorogumo (dedicated to my parents as a wedding anniversary gift), and I feel like this was when I really got back into working on EK. Finishing the series bible became a priority for me again, and I started working on a revised version of Lucian's article. Both were finished before the end of the summer, and within that timeframe I started working on the finalized idea for the show's pilot.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a pilot episode is the beta test for a more realized show, the visual equivalent to a spoken elevator pitch. It helps executives gauge if the show has potential and, if shown to the public, helps show if the concept has an audience out there willing to support it. I had ideas for EK pilots in the past, but many of them never got terribly far or were made so early in the show's development that they didn't reflect what the show concept is now.

Then I had a God moment. Why not use the pilot to tell a story based around Proverbs? Why not bring Solomon's personifications of wisdom and folly to life? It was such a brilliant idea that I immediately set to working on it. This period overlapped with the start of my senior year of college and the week before EK turned 4, so I decided to start fleshing out the concept.

This pilot would depict a glimpse of Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle's travels in which they entered the enigmatic Temple of Wisdom and learned to discern wisdom's voice from folly- quite literally, as Wisdom is working on behalf of the Great Artist Who drew the world of EK into being and Folly is one of the Dark Lord's minions. Both Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly were designed, I wrote out an outline for the pilot, and I named it "Wandering through Wisdom and Faltering through Folly". With that done, I started work on writing the pilot.

This week of celebratory pieces for EK's 4th anniversary was dedicated to sharing development work for the pilot and the usual poster and art of nearly everyone. And... that's about it. Year 4 was one where God shook me up and got my head on straight, getting me focused on what He wants rather than what I wanted to do with the show. It started off kinda shaky (not helped by the months where I was more focused on developing my other show concepts or my versions of pre-existing franchises), but by the end I felt like I'd ironically gained more through letting go and letting God direct the show concept as He willed it to be.

YEAR 5: The Reignited Flame (2023-2024)

Year 5 of EK's development started almost immediately with the fourth annual Crosstober. Unlike previous Crosstober events, I now had enough original material to take up 2/3rds of the event (Eternity Kingdoms and Ex-Villains for Hire) rather than just let EK have only a third. The remaining third of the event was taken up by characters from the Kirby series of video games, and with that, "Crosstober 2023: Dreamy Mix" began.

While I have no intent on doing a EK and EVFH crossover because their worlds are fundamentally incompatible from a worldbuilding standpoint, this event did open up a lot of interesting character dynamics between the two concepts' casts as well as the Kirby crew. Ergo, I plan to make Crosstober 2024 yet another EK/EVFH crossover in hopes of promoting both. Haven't decided on what the third party involved will be, but I'd enjoy doing just what amounts to "Eternity Kingdoms vs Ex-Villains For Hire" this year.

Once Crosstober 2023 was finished, I started work on the Eternity Kingdoms pilot episode based on that original outline alongside integrating my characters into my school projects. I made a physical puppet of Carouselle for my 3D Foundations class and painted her as part of my final Intro to Painting class. While the puppet wasn't 1:1 to her actual design (as seen below), I'm very proud of how she turned out and she currently sits at my desk where I do my art.

And so began 2024, the year that I knew was had to be the show concept's best. I was going to be completely unabashed about sharing the show and why I'm making it all year and see where it got me. That, and I had some design ideas to get out there.

I started the year by sharing Demeter's formal dress (which was inspired by Gwen Stacy's prom dress from the first 20 or so minutes of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; still surprised that doesn't have more fan art) and followed that up with Takoyaki as tainted by the Dark Lord's control (which was meant for the pilot). A few months into the year, I decided to give Lucian's mother some proper legs since they'd been hidden under her dress for years; I based them on- of all things- Squidward's legs, so she'd have two pairs of legs functioning as one "leg".

Of course, I couldn't go too far into the year without celebrating Carouselle's anniversary of existing, so I started by drawing up "Carouselle-ized" versions of Takoyaki, Lucian and Prodigus to go alongside a traditional Carouselle. It was pretty fun taking a design that I'd been refining for nearly five years and adapting the other members of the EK main quartet to fit that design. Some of the results were pretty cursed (as in they didn't look right; looking at you, Lucian), but still.

And then came my fifth anniversary post, which I've retroactively dubbed "Happy Birthday, Carouselle". I wanted to convey the idea that Carouselle was the spark that led to Takoyaki, Lucian and Prodigus's creation, and I believe the final piece conveys that perfectly. She might not join the main quartet as one of the Chosen Ones until the very end of Season 1, but Carouselle's creation was the first of many things that led to Eternity Kingdoms entering active development.

It's one of my absolute favorite pieces I've made for EK and I couldn't have been happier with how it turned out.

Both my Drawing: Narrative Metaphor and Watercolor classes, while the bulk of them were focused on other projects, ended with pieces that were explicitly Eternity Kingdoms-themed. Watercolor ended with a single piece featuring Carouselle getting ready for her day. Since I never really work on environments that much, this was a good opportunity to figure out what the interior of her dressing room in Barnumia would look like (given the angle she's at here... that is a VERY tall dresser).

As for the Narrative Metaphor class, I'd integrated Carouselle into my first two pieces but was rather hesitant to do anything with EK following that. However, my prof wanted me to do more with my original characters since we were given free rein to do anything for our final projects provided the content was original. Ergo, I decided to take advantage of that opportunity.

Calling back to my second piece for the class (which was my first piece redone with a series of obstructions meant to challenge me as an artist), I decided to ask my classmates for various challenges that would prevent me from doing straight renditions of Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle. The challenges for each Chosen One were these: Takoyaki had to be building something, Lucian had to be wearing a Kirby mask, Prodigus had to be drawn realistically, and Carouselle had to be in an exaggerated pose. I initially struggled to figure out a theme which united the pieces... and then it clicked.

This needed to be a collection of pieces about each character's perception of themselves.

Beginning with Takoyaki, I decided to rework the challenge of her building a thing into her (re)building her self. This was meant to represent her trying to maintain her facade of everything appearing to be fine when in actuality she was deeply, deeply broken. For the metaphor to work, I decided to make her appear as if she was made of porcelain, with parts of her broken off, cracks forming on her person, and some cracks already having been filled with gold (as a nod to the Japanese pottery practice of kintsugi). It's meant to show that her own efforts to fix herself cannot work- she needs something greater to help mend her inner brokenness.

Next, I decided to turn the Kirby mask into a metaphor for how Lucian thinks others see him, making his piece into meta-commentary on his own existence. For as much as I've pushed him away from his inspiration (the title character of Steven Universe) and for all that I've done to make him his own character, there will always be those who think he's just a Steven clone, made in the same mold as all those "2010s soft boys" which plagued Western toons for a decade. The mask represents how Lucian fears others see him, and he HATES the thought that people will just see him as a soft, innocent guy.

Conversely, Prodigus's piece being saddled with the goal of drawing him realistically led me to interpret that concept as how he perceives himself and how he wants others to see him. He wants others to see him as this hyper-manly tough guy (the likes of which you'd see in some second-rate shonen anime), and yet he's just some arrogant schlub in armor he's entirely too big for. My experience with realism is decidedly limited, so it was a challenge to figure out how to render some of Prodigus's toonier traits in a realistic style and apply proper shading. However, I'm very proud of the end result- easily the best of the four pieces, but not my favorite.

That would be Carouselle's piece.

Unlike Takoyaki, Lucian and Prodigus, Carouselle is entirely unabashed about who she is, uninhibited by insecurities about how others see her or might see her. Things that bother them never bother her, to paraphrase the inimitable Tiny Tim. The last 20-something years of performing as a stage magician in Barnumia for hundreds of people has helped alleviate what insecurities she does have significantly, and therefore it only felt right to draw her performing (which would naturally incorporate an exaggerated pose as required by the obstruction).

I framed the piece in charcoal-created darkness and used the light around Carouselle to highlight how big the theatre she's in was and used her relatives- both found family and biological fam- to populate the background. Like the piece I did for Carouselle's fifth anniversary of existing, this very quickly became one of my favorite pieces I've done for EK over the last few years. The only thing I regret about it is that I didn't slot Takoyaki, Lucian and Prodigus somewhere in the piece, but it'd've been admittedly difficult to find a spot for them with how the piece was structured.

These four Narrative Metaphor pieces (as well as one themed to Ex-Villains for Hire) were all extremely well-received, with many of my classmates voicing that Takoyaki and Prodigus were their favorites after I explained their whole deal and how their character traits influenced each piece. I honestly wish I'd done something with the EK main cast in my art classes earlier. Granted, I'd have to work around the materials each class had me work with and with the stipulations my profs put on each piece, but that regret still stands.

Following my graduation (which won't be the end of my tenure as a college student; at the time I'm writing this, I'm going for my master's degree and will be finished in May 2026), I immediately took to finishing up the Eternity Kingdoms pilot's script over the span of the next few weeks. Actually getting to write these characters was a delight and it was fun writing out what a potential adventure for Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle might look like. And as promised back in 2023, I shared the first draft here on LinkedIn (link here ).

It was honestly surreal having the pilot done. I was both excited and terrified of how people would react to it- would they see some massive blind spot that I failed to see? Did I miss something in my proofreading? (Admittedly, I did miss some punctuation and some spelling things) Fortunately, I've received very positive feedback on this first draft, with one of my connections reassuring me about my anxieties regarding the pilot's length and another saying that I was an inspiration for them to continue working on their in-development script.

While the pilot's first draft was all-in-all a rousing success for me as a writer and for EK as a whole, I took to rereading it and realized a few of its flaws. One such flaw was that of the inclusion of Futakuchi and General Termagant in the pilot. In the first draft, they were only there to make sarcastic comments and serve as a wall for the Dark Lord to bounce exposition off of. I knew that for as much as I enjoyed working with them as characters, they didn't really add anything to the plot.

Ergo, for my first batch of revisions, I excised Futakuchi and Termagant from the pilot and changed Folly's introduction from her being introduced alongside Wisdom to her being given her mission to led the Chosen Ones astray by the Dark Lord. Other changes made included reduction of over-explaining how things happened and shortening character descriptions down to something more manageable. Even then, the script is still at 56 pages, and I'm certain that number is going to shrink as each draft is made.

Will I share the revised drafts on LinkedIn? Probably not. Instead, I might just do infrequent progress updates every now and then to show where the pilot is whenever I make any tweaks to the script. Regardless of how many changes I make, I aim to have the pilot's script finalized by 2026. I did say I was going to have the EK pilot finished by the time I'm out of college, and those revisions as guided by the hand of God will hopefully fulfill that promise.

Perhaps I should talk more about what influenced the pilot and my goal for it here. The pilot was influenced by a trio of episodes from Star Wars: The Clone Wars that saw Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka enter an odd spiritual realm inhabited by a father/daughter/son trio that represents the light side, dark side and balance of the Force. While this arc had no ultimate impact on the narrative of Star Wars and I like this arc less now given how it doesn't portray the balance of the Force as Lucas envisioned it (the dark side is meant to be an aberration; the Force is at balance when there's only the light side), it was a clever way of exploring the main trio's traits positive and negative, personifying aspects of the Force and foreshadowing Anakin's sacrifice to save his son through the Father (personification of the balance)'s sacrifice to save him. Combine that with my first reading of Proverbs in 2022, and the result were personifications of Wisdom and Folly that borrowed from the Mortis gods.

Any good writer ought to teach their younger selves a lesson when writing out their characters' stories, and I aimed to teach myself proper wisdom. I have realized that I've had a rather difficult time letting go and letting God direct the show over the last few years, and therefore I decided to work that into everyone's arcs for the pilot. Takoyaki wants to have the control necessary to be what she thinks will make her a better leader. Lucian wants to control what his destiny will be. Prodigus wants control over how others perceive him. And Carouselle wants better control over her magic.

Through their time with Lady Wisdom, the Chosen Ones learn to let go of their need for control and place their trust in the Great Artist. It's a lesson that I at a younger age would've greatly appreciated, and I believe that God had His hand on me as I was penning the most spiritually significant parts of the story. There's this wonderful moment from near the end when Takoyaki, possessed and puppeteered by Folly, voices her need for an unhealthy amount of control over things she continually frets about.

Here's Lucian's response:

"But listen to us, Takoyaki- please! If you just trust in the Great Artist and Him alone... then he'll lead us to the ending He has in mind!... ... we'll be there for you. We'll be there when things get tough. We'll be right by your side no matter what. We're going to win in the end, especially if we're going to look like that portrait in the book. That's the thing the Artist has painted for us, and our journey now is just Him adding a new stroke to the tapestry one day at a time. Sound right?"

I believe that was God speaking to me about the show's future. It isn't my place to fret about how long each season might be or where it will end up airing, all He has called me to do is to simply trust and obey. It stands as the strongest thing I've written for Eternity Kingdoms and the greatest demonstration of what the show's going to be one day, and I doubt that bit is going to change at all during the rewrites.

Moving on from the pilot, the summer of 2024 brought about continued art for Eternity Kingdoms and my other show concepts. I tinkered with King Horn-Honker's late Season 1 outfit, I designed Folly's end-of-the-pilot "demoted" form, and revised how Carouselle looks without her hat so it's a bit poofier and more curly-haired 40s film starlet-looking. I decided to make June of 2024 an "all-original" month dedicated to EK, Ex-Villains for Hire, Integrated, and my animated film concept Party Mix, allowing me to show off many of these developments within the world of EK.

Around the end of June and start of July, I came up with an idea to get away from the same set of poses I tended to use for my characters by instead doing headshots of my characters. These pieces, which I've affectionately dubbed "Headbuds" (headshots + buddy), aim to capture my character's visages with a bit more detail than usual. I drew all of the currently in-use Eternity Kingdoms characters over the span of a few days and later shared them here on LinkedIn from the end of July to the start of August while I was on vacation in Anna Maria Island, FL for the first time in 5 years to celebrate my graduation.

Another EK-related project I started work on over the summer is a series outline for EK, something that will serve as a narrative roadmap for the show that's specific enough to help guide the show over its hopefully-seven seasons but vague enough to work with shorter seasons if required by whatever streaming service or production company the series ends up with. For as much as I want the show to have 20 episodes per season, I know that I won't be guaranteed that, especially as a potentially first-time showrunner entering an industry that's plagued by increasingly shorter and shorter seasons of television.

Therefore, I felt it wise to restructure the show's narrative in a way that allowed it to still work even if it ended up with only eight episodes. I don't want EK to fall into a Hazbin Hotel situation where the show is brimming with ideas but ends up struggling to flesh out the majority of them because it's only got so few episodes to work with*. I'm by no means finished with this series outline (and I don't think I will be for a while), but it'll help me to pinpoint the most important aspects of the story that God has given me.

*I'm no fan of the work and worldview of Vivienne Medrano (Hazbin creator), but from what I've learned from both my college art class classmates and my own independent research, it seems like she was so excited to bring her show concept to life that she ended up biting off more than she could chew writing-wise and Hazbin as a whole ended up suffering for it.

Following my return from vacation, I returned to doing the usual for EK in addition to planning out what I'd do for the show concept's fifth anniversary (you know, aside from this article). I initially planned to do something akin to "Inspiration and Inspired", but due to struggles getting used to my graduate school classes as well as other stressors, I compressed the event down to just one week going from September 9th to the 15th. Standout pieces from this weeklong event included Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle interacting with their original designs, with all but Lucian looking at where they began with joy.

To culminate the event, I decided to modernize my first attempt at a poster for EK, which was a send-up of the poster for Steven Universe: The Movie- the very thing that God used to accelerate my disparate ideas for original characters and stories into what Eternity Kingdoms is now. It releases on the 15th, and I hope you all enjoy it. All in all, this has been a very successful celebration of EK's 5th anniversary.

Year 5 of Eternity Kingdoms's development has been the most fun I've had with it since 2022, and I think that's come from that decision to be as upfront about it with others as possible this year. I've been given a great story to tell, a world to explore, and characters to continue to expand upon, so why not share that with people? In doing that, God has brought much joy to me and those whom I share Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus and Carouselle with and guided me through sharing their story and writing out the first draft of the pilot.

CONCLUSION

Once again, as of today, Eternity Kingdoms is five years old. I still can't believe I or my silly little show concept have made it this far, but that's where following the plans of God for your life will take you. Have there been times where I was torn between my will and His will? Yes. Yet those were brief and momentary trials that I emerged from a humbler, more faithful creative, and I'm certain He will use whatever crises I face to refine me into the image of His Son more and more.

There's a funny thing about perspective as a Christian. When you're going through something, you struggle to see where God is in that moment. When you look back on it years later, you see the hand of God on so many little things and realize He was orchestrating things for His perfect purposes and for your best. It's like looking at someone doing something while they're painting that seemingly doesn't make sense only to see how brilliant that decision was once you see what the artist has done with that choice.

Eternity Kingdoms's development has been full of those moments. I didn't expect that interaction with those artsy gals in high school to be what lead to Carouselle's creation. I didn't expect a worldwide pandemic to give me a jumpstart on developing the show's world and characters. I didn't expect that lovely fan art to lead me to redirect the show's style into something more my own.

I didn't expect my decision to get baptized back in 2015 to birth something that would end up becoming my single greatest creative endeavor.

So I end this article looking out towards a future that, despite what seems like the American animation industry caving in on itself due to a multitude of factors that should've been addressed sooner, looks bright for Eternity Kingdoms. I know not the specifics of that future, but I know He Who holds that future and will make all things work together for the good of those who love Him.

The adventures of Takoyaki, Lucian, Prodigus, and Carouselle will be televised. Their story will bring the Gospel to ears who would otherwise reject it. And I couldn't be happier to be part of this grand design.

Thank you for reading this, everyone. God bless you all and have a lovely rest of your day.