Visually, this is where it all began.

Jerry and Bill were working on the LUCHADORES FIVE comic short. Bill did a rough sketch of the whole team (as can be seen on the lower half of the included L5 image). There was something magical happening.

I told Jerry that Bill's first sketch was awesome and that we NEEDED to find a way to make toys. Bill was still working on finding the definitive style for Lucha Libre. But even in this cuter chibi style (and with Dr. Pantera and Diablo Loco's mask designs still not finalized) you could tell that Bill and Jerry were on to something.

Gobi, one of Bill's best friends, saw it too. He had a childhood idea of a dude with a cactus head (many of Gobi's early ideas come from childhood). After a few discussions with Jerry, he began tweaking his cactus head concept into a Luchador and TEQUILA was born.

Shortly after, I told Jerry to help me create a pitch sheet for both the Luchadores Five and Tequila. I was really commited to making these dudes into toys and decided we could e-mail bomb our favorite toy companies and a videogame company called Behemoth.

We got some really nice replies from the majority of people we approached. Mark and Brian at Super7 were super nice. They shared some words of encouragement and got me in touch with GoHero's Steve Forde. Steve was a cool dude and he gave me a pretty good sense of the process of making vinyl toys. His enthusiasm had me even more convinced that the idea of making our Luchadores into toys was the right one.

I even made some headway with Behemoth. Behemoth had just released ALIEN HOMINID for the Gamecube and Xbox. I really felt like the spirit of that game had something in common with what we were doing. I heard that the Behemoth guys were thinking of doing a multiplayer game so I was trying to convince them to do one with the Luchadores Five and Tequila. Both Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin got back to me via email. They really loved the designs I sent them (I sent the 2 'pitch' jpegs below and a few final pencils images of some of the other characters from Luchadores Five) and were going to talk to their investors about the possibility of collaboration.

They got back at me a few weeks later and said the investors didn't feel comfortable investing in a game that they couldn't have full ownership of (which I totally understood) but wished us well on our endeavors. That multiplayer game ended up becoming the amazing CASTLE CRASHERS. I assume they were already in development with Castle Crashers when I approached them. Whatever the circumstances, it was a great honor that those guys loved our designs enough that they considered collaborating (even if it was for just a second).

With all the genuine enthusiasm I was getting, I knew we were on to something!