For today’s post I want to talk about a relatively new animated TV show that I had the pleasure to have worked on, Solar Opposites (2020), created by Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan for the Hulu streaming platform. More specifically, I’ll talk about the show’s first episode from the second season, The Sacred Non-Repeating Number (2021), directed by Lucas Gray, which was the first episode from an international production I had the opportunity to contribute to as a Production Coordinator while working at 52 Animation Studio back in Brazil.
Solar Opposites is an animated adult sitcom about a group of aliens that, after leaving their home-world of Shlorp before it got destroyed by a meteor, crash down on top of a suburban house for sale somewhere in USA’s midwest region. The blue and green couple, Korvo and Terry, constantly debate between themselves and their replicants, Yumyulack and Jesse, whether or not earth is a good or bad place for them to live, enjoying or hating what the human species has to offer while they wait for their Pupa pet to evolve and terraform the planet into a new Shlorp.
The Shlorpian group get themselves into the most absurd situations while trying to understand and adapt to human culture, almost always wreaking havoc on their neighborhood while hilariously pointing out the ridiculousness of our own habits as humans in the post-modern world.
In the Sacred Non-Repeating Number episode, the aliens find out that they were not the only group who landed on earth when Korvo finds a distress signal coming from London. Korvo, Terry and Jesse fly off to meet the other Shlorpians, while Yumyulack tries to befriend his old bullies at school and the frightened Pupa stay at home watching Robocop. Korvo identifies himself with the rich and traditional Shlorpians they meet, but Terry and Jesse think they are lame and fly back home to party and have fun while their leader stays at London.
Eventually they all realize that they need each other after a few crazy bad experiences while apart, and Korvo finds out that the other family of Shlorpians are planning to steal their pupa and fly off to a new planet to terraform. He then rushes back to home to help Terry and the others fight them off in an epic battle.
As a Production Coordinator at 52 Animation Studio I had to manage a team of artists, assigning and reviewing their work, as well as to talk and deliver the work to our clients, Bardel Entertainment, the main production studio hired to make the show. Our work consisted of drawing and coloring backgrounds in Adobe Photoshop, with the occasional use of Illustrator too, while I also made use of spreadsheets and a few other softwares to help me manage our work properly so that everything was done in time.
Solar Opposites has already been renewed for a third and fourth seasons, and the two first seasons are available for watching on the Hulu and DisneyPlus streaming platforms.
References:
“Alien Animated Comedy From ‘Rick and Morty’ Duo & 20th TV Gets Hulu Series Order”. Deadline. Aug 28, 2018.
“‘Rick and Morty’ Duo Lands 2-Season Order for ‘Solar Opposites’ at Hulu”. Hollywood Reporter. Aug 28, 2018.
“Solar Opposites”. Rottentomatoes.com
“Solar Opposites”. IMDb.com
