Toro - Soulstone Knight Number One

Here's a chance to give you guys a little more about 'Soulstone', my new epic series on Squirrelworks.com.

Firstly, this series is based somewhat on the Mayan culture of Central America. There were very real prophecies by the Mayan, predicting strange attacks by a strange foreign people, from where they originated and how they got there was a mystery. The catalyst for my creating 'Soulstone' was the concept that every civilization has a Judgement Day. This was my fictional explanation of the Mayan's last day and the story that would follow many centuries later.

I did a load of research before launching this series but I had already done a bunch of sketches that I really liked (prior to the research) - and was hoping some of those would work well with what I would later find in the books and historical works. Fortunately, there were many serendipidous findings - some things would fit perfectly. One example is that I had already pictured the crafts that the girls would eventually pilot as five very specific animals: a bull, a bear, a lizard, an eagle and a jaguar. Imagine my surprise when, as I continued to research, I found that the Mayan people had chosen two of those same animal types when they named their two main warrior groups: the eagle (who acted as scouts) and the jaguar (who were the warriors.) I was amazed. How perfect was that?

Also, I was looking for a good term for the crafts and found that the two of the aforementioned Mayan warrior types were called Knights, supposedly a phrase adopted from the Moors. So, that's how I came to call these crafts the 'Knights'. They are all, by the way, made completely out of stone with silver and gold trim.

Here's the first of the five, the bull. He was tough - I like drawing bulls, but getting the image in my head down on paper was a challenge. He'll be piloted by Maria, the girl on the teaser poster. His tail, along with the other knights who have tails, is a carved end held by beams of electricity.