Edward’s first production is an animated short which doubles as the pilot episode for an animated series entitled Hybrid Brad.
Production began at the end of 2022 and was completed in August of 2023. Further down this page are the early character designs along with information that was provided to the co-writer and voice actors about the characters, relationships, and settings.
Edward’s IMDb.
See the official Hybrid Brad website for more.
Hybrid Brad
NOTICE: Protected by Copyright Law: VAu-1-455-497
The Hybrid Brad is inspired by science fiction stories about intelligent life on other planets and in outer space. Although the UFO topic was fringe and ridiculed for decades, recently governments have come forward to proclaim their existence and mystery. Testimonials of abduction experiencers point to genetic manipulation and the creation of an Alien plus Human hybrid race.
Animated Series:
- Characters, Macro Storylines, Settings.
- Episode plots are based on themes at NFT slideshow above, where each image is a plot line.
- Pilot episode plot, elements, and series groundwork.
TITLE/INTRO SEQUENCE SONG -
Backstory content delivered: (No longer abduction story, simplified to…)
- Rex is bored patrolling over north america and sees an ad on human tv on his monitor to buy human donor eggs, and decides to get one to make a child in vitro as a companion. He incubates and raises the child on the spaceship.
- While Brad is growing up, he exhibits human traits that are separate from Rex. When Brad is a teenager, he starts getting bored and antsy and tells his dad he wants to see what it’s like on earth. Rex begins to teach him things that are particular to earth that he should be aware of: “Son, when you’re on earth…”
-Rex programs him beam teleporter with an emergency feature using the word “maple” due to his affinity for Canadian landscapes. When Brad says or thinks of the word (which happens just by hearing it) Rex instantly is beamed to be there for him to help.
- Rex telepathically picks up on Brad’s emotions, both on the ship and when he’s on earth.
- Brad is teleported to his donor, Myriam’s, house. She takes him and he keeps living with her.
Rex was bored and lonely flying over North America
A spark of inspiration told him to become a dad
The baby’s DNA was part human and part Rex
The minute that he held him he knew he’d call him Brad
In telekinesis Brad became a master
In telepathy his mind was getting faster
Then as a teen now both of them were bored
(Brad) ”Dad I’m part human I wanna see greener pastures”
(Rex) “Son, when you’re on earth, our secret you must keep
Think the word “maple” by your side I’ll quickly be
I’ll send you to your mother perhaps she’ll take you in
Call me when you need me as your new life begins
With our telepathic link, your emotions I will feel”
Hybrid Brad - Cast of characters
NOTE: THESE ARE THE ORIGINAL (OLD) CHARACTER DESIGNS. SEE THE NEW ONES AT HYBRIDBRAD.COM
Rex -
Appearance: large skull, temple nerve, gray/yellow skin, black eyes, gray outfit.
Traits: 750 years old, clumsy, intrusive, challenging, over-protective, supernatural abilities.
A lonely gray alien on his spaceship who monitors space above North America. He decides to create a son in order to have a companion, as described in the intro/title sequence backstory. By the time he is a teen, Brad is bored of life on the ship too and wants to see what it’s like on earth. They have a telepathic relationship whereby everything that Brad experiences and feels, Rex gets to experience and feel too, which is an unanticipated aspect of the hybrid DNA creation. While Brad is on earth, Rex learns what emotions feel like: humor, love, sadness, anger, distress, suffering, etc. Rex watches Brad on the monitor so that when he senses one of Brad’s human emotions telepathically he understands what the circumstances are that caused it.
Brad -
Appearance: semi-large skull concealed by hair, beige skin, whites of his eyes are black, sunglasses on his shirt.
Traits: 16 years old, calm, inquisitive, self-sufficient, clever, supernatural abilities, emotionally expressive.
Rex’s in vitro only son. His early childhood is on the spaceship with Rex. As a teen, Brad wants to see what it’s like on earth and to have human experiences. He has special abilities such as: telepathy, ESP, remote viewing, levitate objects, etc. He evokes strong emotions in the people he engages with, be they positive or negative emotions. He gets perturbed when his dad sometimes beams down and interferes, but still loves him. Only Brad can see him when Rex beams to earth in a cylinder of light.
Mabel -
Appearance: light brown skin, nerdy but cute, perky body, stylish glasses, high ponytail.
Traits: 16 years old, book smart, problem solver, witty, compassionate.
Brad’s friend, with intimacy tension due to mutual shy attraction. They are high school classmates and always walk to and from school together. They met because they are next door neighbors. Their daily adventures occur either at school, on their walks, at the kombucha kiosk BoochBen’s, or at either of their homes. Her mom, Tiara, moved into her home at the same time Brad’s birth mom/caregiver, Myriam, moved into hers, so they became friendly neighbors. Mabel is mixed race: her mother is African American and her father is Asian American. Mabel carries a fanny pack and sometimes Brad and Mabel need a particular object, like a screwdriver or even a large object like a sledgehammer, and Brad supernaturally causes one to be in the bag and tells her to check it. She opens and pulls out the object, then just scratches her head (I didn’t even know I had one!)
Myriam, aka Ms Fairweather -
Appearance: attractive, slightly overweight, shoulder length hair, tan skin.
Traits: 40 years old, gay, intelligent, caring, supportive, dating but frustrated.
Brad’s caretaker and also Brad and Mabel’s high school science teacher. Rex beams Brad as a teen to earth and Myriam happens to have an accident with Brad in a parking lot. When Myriam gets out of the car, Brad is lying down, shivering, and afraid. She begins to take him to the hospital, but he is afraid and touches her arm. She feels something special and is inspired to take him home for a while to care for him there instead of the hospital. He remains with her. Myriam is an actively-dating gay woman, looking for the perfect female companion. Her deadbeat, stoner brother lives in her basement. Myriam is Brad’s egg donor, but isn’t aware he’s her son.
Sammy -
Appearance: skinny, hair like The Beatles and partially over his eyes, facial hair, sloppily dressed, pale skin, tattoos.
Traits: 45 years old, stoner, always hungry, unmotivated, good guitarist.
Myriam’s brother. He’s a stoner who dropped out of college 25 years ago to form a now-defunct rock band, and he is living in Myriam’s basement. He gives her cash partial rent intermittently with earnings from random odd jobs that change all the time. He mooches food from the kitchen and frequently passes through the house to and from the basement stairs. Brad deliberately messes with him by planting outlandish thoughts and ideas in his mind. When he emerges from the basement, rock music is heard and smoke billows out as he slams the door open, damaging the adjacent wall, and shouting unique salutations each time: Salutazaine, Hellowinsky, Hikuwama, Greetingsovich, etc. After stacking food in both hands from the fridge to take to the basement with him, he always perilously closes the door behind him, such as with one foot while balancing, with a pinky while backing up, etc. When the door manages to slam shut he is heard falling down the stairs with plates crashing (recurs). Sometimes hangs out with Ben at BoochBen’s. (Although never overtly stated, to Brad he is Uncle Sammy.)
Tiara, aka Dr Pan -
Appearance: brown skin, black hair up in a bun, reading glasses perched over forehead, well-dressed, professional.
Traits: 40 years old, insightful, supportive, laughs at her husband’s unusual fetish.
Mabel’s mom. African American pet psychologist who runs her practice from a home office, where clients meet her. The clients are never seen but their voices are sometimes heard through the door while discussing the psychological distress of their pet, which is actually their own issue projected onto the pet (depressed, financial/kibble concerns, argument with the neighbor’s pet, etc.) It’s obvious the client is discussing their own problem instead of the pet’s, but Tiara plays along.
Eugene -
Appearance: light skin, characteristic Asian face, average body.
Traits: 45 years old, hardworking, gently demanding, strict about house rules/chores, has unusual clothing fetish.
Mabel’s dad. Asian American who has his own dry cleaning business. He has a fetish for wearing his customers’ unusual male or female garments so he generally walks around the house in odd outfits. He often slips and falls on Tiger’s pool of drool and shouts unintelligible asian-esque curses as he lofts in the air on his way to impact the floor. Type of fall/slide changes per episode. In a compassionate act, Brad rapidly moves a pillow with telekinesis to soften the blow and shoots the pillow away again so nobody notices. He does not do this for Sammy when he falls down the stairs, instead smirks.
Epsilon -
Appearance: Skeletal frame of a cat, circuits and lights are exposed through transparent body.
Traits: telepathically devious with animals on earth, cuddles up to Rex, purrs, telepathically speaks with Canadian accent to both Rex and Tiger.
Rex made a cat-like robot as a pet for both he and Brad when he was young. Epsilon and Rex have conversations on the spaceship. Rex often holds Epsilon in an arm. Epsilon watches Tiger and other animals on the monitor and implants dangerous, risky, and nefarious urges that the animal acts out. For example, causes a bird in a tree over BoochBen’s to aim to poop in a customer’s drink, etc.
Tiger -
Appearance: shaggy dog with hair over the eyes, expressive mouth gestures, large nose and tongue.
Traits: Suspicious of Brad, protective of Mabel, constantly sniffing things and drooling on floor.
Mabel’s dog, who always growls at Brad initially but then calms down after Brad’s brief telepathic communication. Epsilon telepathically tells Tiger to do things, sometimes helpful and sometimes devious.
Pax -
Appearance: bullet-shaped head where point is the chin and flat end is top of tall head, small black eyes/nose/mouth are grouped together near the bottom of head, big colorful third eye in middle of forehead with single bushy eyebrow, red outfit.
Traits: 900 years old, stoic, no-nonsense, unyielding.
Rex’s nemesis, an alien of another species who also patrols the umbrella of space over North America. They communicate holographically and meet in the holo-garden to have virtual battles that Rex always initiates and always loses violently.
Ben -
Appearance: lanky, blond man-bun, white t-shirt, black suspenders.
Traits: 30 years old, insightful, out-of-the-box thinker, eavesdropper, joins in customer conversations.
Hipster owner of kombucha kiosk BoochBen’s at an intersection along Brad and Mabel’s walk to/from school. They stop there often. Ben offers enlightening advice and insight. Sometimes Sammy hangs out chatting with Ben at the kiosk.
Tony -
Appearance: jock, strong build, wears jersey number 8, short pants, well-groomed, smiles often.
Traits: 17 years old, excited, motivated, poor student, trouble understanding, sincere, Boston or Chicago accent.
Brad and Mabel’s lab partner in science class, they share a lab table. He has a crush on Mabel but she doesn’t discuss anything with him other than the assignment. Grades are based on group projects where all participate, and Tony is an athlete more than a student and doesn’t understand the assignments. When the teacher asks him a question, Brad telepathically gives him the answer in order to keep the group’s grade up. Brad also messes with him by causing him to act strangely in class sometimes, like walking away from the desk to the pencil sharpener where he grinds it down to the eraser so that Brad and Mabel have privacy to chat, etc. Sometimes, specifically to shock/impress him, while Brad is in class or walking past Tony outside school, he displays an impressive athletic move by using telekinesis to assist or via pre-cognition (eg. kicks a can and it ricochets off something and lands in the recycling bin; shoots a balled up paper from long distance into a small trash can; catches somebody’s phone before it hits the ground; etc.)
Macro storylines:
Each episode begins with Rex explaining something Brad will need to know about earth when he goes there (“Son, when you’re on earth…”). This moment is a snippet of a time before Brad arrived to earth the first time, when Rex was explaining all sorts of things to him about the planet. Each episode is one of those things.
Rex is the sole occupant of his spaceship and was tasked by his superiors on Zeta Reticuli to monitor the umbrella of space above North America. There is a rival species of aliens that also monitors earth, and Rex sometimes has holographic communications with Pax, his rival counterpart in space.
Rex can have a tendency to over-parent, so sometimes he’ll beam himself down to earth into Brad’s moment, but he is only visible to Brad (and Tiger), who is generally startled by the sudden appearance of his dad. Rex tries to interject with what he thinks would be good human advice, but it’s generally bad advice so Brad doesn’t listen and tells him to go back.
As an emergency measure, Rex programmed his beam machine so that if Brad is in trouble he can say one word that will cause Rex to beam into Brad’s moment instantaneously. Because Rex happens to enjoy flying his spaceship over Canada due to its natural grandeur, Rex made the programmed word “Maple,” as in the maple leaf on the Canadian flag. Brad tries to avoid calling Mabel by her name because the beam machine mistakes it for Maple and Rex suddenly appears. Anybody in Brad’s proximity who says Mabel’s name can suddenly cause Rex to beam down to earth when Rex is not expecting it. He is generally in awkward or vulnerable postures (laying in bed, on the toilet, wearing a tutu, looking at a dirty alien magazine, putting on lipstick, caressing Epsilon, etc.) Only Brad and Tiger can see him though. Tiger growls at first which switches to brief telepathic dialog with Rex, who sometimes taunts him before beaming away.
Mabel doesn’t know that Brad is a hybrid, but she sometimes notices him using one of his gifts. For example, she walks in on him levitating a bottle to pour water in a glass because his other hand is holding something. He can sense her alarm when she sees what’s happening, and he promptly drops the other item and grabs the bottle. She shakes her head and cleans her glasses.
Rex and nemesis Pax have a tense relationship because both species want sole control of the space over earth. They have holographic communications on the spaceship and threaten an explosive attack on each other, but never do because it would call attention to them from the surface of the planet. They are both under orders from their superiors to remain incognito in the sky. Rex gets frustrated with Pax and often challenges him to a virtual battle in the holo-garden. Rex always loses the battle in different ways. They can telepathically will any object or lifeform they desire into the holo-garden to use as a weapon.
The title logo’s H and B represent mixed chromosomes of the two species, alien and human (Rex and Myriam).
Settings:
Science class -
Myriam (Ms Fairweather) is teacher. Students are grouped in 3’s. Brad, Mabel, and Tony share a lab table. Mabel is in the middle. Brad and Tony don’t talk much, if at all. Science equipment on table, sink, notebooks. Posters of scientists, atoms, slogans, etc in background. Whiteboard behind teacher’s desk, skeleton in corner. Skull is same size as all kids except Brad, who always steers clear of the skeleton when called to the whiteboard to calculate a physics or chemistry problem (so he doesn’t call attention to a comparison with his larger-than-normal skull.)
BoochBen’s -
Kombucha kiosk outside on sidewalk at busy intersection that Brad and Mabel often stop at and chat. It is a parked mini-trailer and has an awning and a peace flag. Trees in the background, cars and pedestrians pass by. Chalk drawn A-frame sign on sidewalk. Printed menu above the opening where Ben stands, elevated. He hollers to pedestrians “getcha booch”, “feelin’ boochy?” etc.
Mabel, Tiara, and Eugene’s house -
Generally just see the dining table between the entrance/living room and kitchen. When someone enters the home they walk past the dining table. Brad and Mabel often do homework here but chat about episodic content. When Eugene is wearing a customer’s garment, he walks by in the background. Tiger sits/rests near the table.
Brad, Myriam, and Sammy’s house -
Generally scenes are in the large kitchen, with the door to the basement off to the side. Brad and Mabel sit at the island counter to have a snack, Sammy mooches food from the fridge. Myriam prepares meals and often invites women she is dating over for dinner (Myriam, date, and Brad at the table). Brad can pick up on the dark side of each date and ask the right questions so that Myriam gets a hunch whether the person is worth a second date. Myriam appreciates that Brad asks the right questions so she doesn’t waste her time continuing dating them.
Rex’s spaceship -
Typical saucer-shaped craft. Interior is metallic with numerous monitors on the walls. There are two seats, one is usually empty but sometimes Epsilon sits on it. In the center of the ceiling there is a transponder device that serves as a targeted laser beam, which is the beaming technology. No matter where Rex is standing, when it is initiated a cone of light stretches from the transponder to Rex’s head then straight down through the bottom of the ship. A device is mounted that is the magnetic base for the peThere is an illuminated square off to the side that is the access point to the holo-garden. On the opposite side there is another illuminated square that is for holographic communications with Pax and Rex’s superiors, where the person Rex is communicating with seems to be standing in front of him at full scale and in holographic 3D.
Holo-garden -
When Rex steps on the holo-garden square, he is instantly transported into the holo-garden. It is a large virtual space that becomes the setting for many different background types. Occupants can will any sort of object or lifeform into the holo-garden. Rex and Pax frequently have battles here that always end very poorly for Rex. When he is defeated he is immediately returned to the illuminated square in the ship. Rex gets frustrated with Pax and challenges him. Pax states: Choose your turf; or similar language. Rex states, for example: Holo-garden, a crater at the base of a volcano on planet venus with large trees and a full moon. AI graphic generator Dall-E-2 generates it, and is usually a bit unexpected. Rex’s setting request changes each holo-garden visit.
Episode 1 (pilot) - Highly Energized Lines.
Based on NFT: “Son, when you’re on earth… You will see highly energized lines on poles in communities. Our energy liaison is currently helping humans ‘discover’ nuclear fusion.”
General idea: energy source of the future, which is what Rex has, is superior to our existing power system.
Rex is in a wooded area picking mushrooms and putting them in pouch, his craft is landed in background. As walks, gets to clearing with fenced-in electrical power distribution station. He flashes back to “Son when you’re on earth…” for the episode.
Cut to: Bird lands on top of telephone pole near trees and is fine. Another bird lands on a line and gets a jolt, swinging to an upside down position. Zoom out to reveal BoochBen’s where Brad and Mabel are chatting.
Rex and Pax brag about whose energy source technology is better, culminating in Rex battling Pax in the holo-garden.
In science class, Brad does a calculation on the whiteboard for nuclear fusion and does an experiment that sustains a glowing light. He knows he can make it continue infinitely but cuts it off because human scientists haven’t gotten past a millisecond of sustained energy so far.
Unattractiveness of a city’s power lines above streets.
There’s a night with rolling blackouts, there’s a blackout during school.
On Rex’s ship, he switches to power conserve mode and the environment has really cool lighting (positive reinforcement of efficiency).
Analogies throughout episode such as: using matches compared to a lighter (Sammy); using a candle instead of a light bulb (during blackout); using a hand mixer instead of a blender; etc.
At some point in episode: In class, Myriam calls asks a question. Students, including Mabel, raise their hands. Brad winces as Mabel’s name is called and Rex suddenly appears in a beam of light, in a compromised posture. (To give example of the emergency word “maple” backlash.)
December, 2021 - February, 2022
Browse the NFT collection of storyboards (the slideshow below) https://opensea.io/collection/son-when-youre-on-earth
Alien Dad, Rex, introduces his Hybrid Son, Brad, to the Planet Earth, where he arrives to live among the humans. There is a limited number of 21 NFT works, in honor of the 21M limit to the Bitcoin supply.
(Automatic 10 sec slideshow)
