The Making of Destiny's Hand:
Sketch Pad #1 - Olivia Soldana
Written by DeFilippis & Weir • Art by Buckethead
Olivia Soldana is the 16 year old lead character of Destiny's Hand. She's the right hand woman to the Captain of the ship, and when he needs his crew to go on one last adventure in his name, she's the one he puts in charge. But the crew has difficulties following a girl, no matter how tough she might be. So in order to lead the crew to the Destiny's Hand and honor her Captain's request, Olivia's going to have to get creative.
Olivia's design was the subject of a LOT of debate. Our original proposal called for something more traditionally pirate. We wanted pants (of the tight, pirate variety) and maybe an oversized shirt.
Buckethead's design was far less authentic pirate, but much more what one might expect of a manga female. Jason loved it. There was a lot of back and forth, and we decided that so long as Olivia wasn't someone who conformed to how anyone expects her to dress (not her parents, and not the other pirates), it worked for us.
Buckethead initially gave her two pistols, which we loved. But we also wanted her to have a blade, as the genre calls for knife and sword fighting. It was his idea to give her a blade that was essentially an attachment to Captain Blaine's own weapon. It cements the bond between the two characters and gives her a weapon that looks cool.
It was this sort of storytelling instinct that Buckethead started bringing to the character design work that told us he was the right guy to tell this story with us.
