An Interview with Álvaro Calmet

Co-Founder & Director of Solar Balls | Telos Media

Álvaro Calmet didn’t wait for Hollywood. He built an audience instead.

Long before Solar Balls became a global animated brand with millions of viewers, merchandise, Patreon supporters, and streaming deals, Álvaro was a teenager in Peru animating videos on YouTube by himself. Writing. Editing. Voice casting strangers online. Running community comments.

For years the work barely paid.

Then something clicked. A new partnership. A new production model. And a digital-first strategy that treated audience as infrastructure rather than marketing.

Today Solar Balls isn’t just a YouTube channel. It’s a transmedia universe with trading cards, merchandising, Patreon support, and a feature film on the way.

Álvaro, for people who don’t know you, tell us about your background and how Solar Balls came to life.

I’m a Peruvian writer, director, and animator, and I’m the co-founder and director of Solar Balls.

I started on YouTube when I was around fourteen or fifteen years old. I had a channel called The Lyosacks. I basically did everything myself for more than ten years. Writing, animation, editing, managing the community. Even voice acting with people I found online.

The channel eventually reached around 100,000 subscribers, which sounds great, but financially it wasn’t sustainable.

During that time I also made a film that took about three years to produce. It didn’t perform the way I hoped. I did a writing master’s degree in Canada. I even developed a video game called Imp of the Sun. I’m very proud of all these projects, but again they didn’t create long-term financial sustainability.

Then something changed.

Oliver Gilpin reached out to me and proposed launching a new YouTube project with a small team. That project became Mr. Spherical. Within one or two months it hit around 100,000 subscribers. Before the first year it crossed a million.

That’s when I realized the real difference wasn’t just the idea. It was the structure behind it.

How did SolarBalls evolve from there?

After MrSpherical started working, Oliver and I discussed creating a second channel together as equal partners. That became SolarBalls.

It eventually surpassed the first project and grew into a global brand with merchandising and distribution deals. The big lesson was that building with a team completely changes the speed of iteration. When I worked alone everything took longer and there was no feedback loop.

With the support and the team Oliver provided, we could test, adjust, release consistently. Consistency is everything.

Most people obsess over subscriber counts. You say subscribers matter less than something else. What is it?

Views and relevance.

Subscribers don’t necessarily translate into weekly views. What matters is whether the algorithm continues surfacing your work and whether the concept remains culturally relevant.

You can have millions of subscribers and low views if your concept loses momentum or your value proposition is limited.

So the real question is: can this idea sustain continuous production?

 Why did Solar Balls work as a format?

Production efficiency was key. Our characters are spheres. That sounds simple, but it allows faster animation and reusable rigs.

But if animation becomes simpler, you have to compensate elsewhere. Lighting. Atmosphere. Music. Tone.

SolarBalls mixes an ethereal space atmosphere with comedy. That contrast made it feel unique.

How did you decide between Shorts and long-form episodes?

It depends on the project.

MrSpherical started with Shorts. Shorts built awareness quickly but didn’t generate much revenue.

Later we introduced long-form episodes designed to feel like a cinematic extension of the Shorts so the audience wouldn’t experience a tonal shift.

SolaBalls did the opposite. It launched with weekly long-form episodes, initially 2 to 3 minutes, which evolved intoseven minutes. We later added Shorts as complementary content.

Each strategy has trade-offs.

 Retention is the holy grail on YouTube. What actually keeps people watching?

Retention isn’t just fast editing or dopamine spikes. It’s character investment. Music. Narrative turns. Emotional movement.

If people care about the characters, they are more likely to stay.

You built a massive community around SolarBalls. How important is community infrastructure?

It’s essential. Our Discord has around 300,000 members. That’s where we see real conversations about the show.

We also release episodes on Patreon a week early. That early-access model is the main value proposition there.

The Patreon audience gives feedback before the public release, which sometimes helps us adjust things.

Let’s talk about money. What does the Solar Balls monetization stack actually look like?

Diversification. YouTube ad revenue helped early, but we never wanted to depend on one income source.

Patreon is a major pillar. Roughly the same as what we earn from YouTube ads.

Merchandising became the biggest surprise. Apparel didn’t perform as well as we expected, but collectibles did.

Plush toys performed better. And our trading card game, SolarCards, became the best ROI product we’ve launched.

We validated it through a 2024 Kickstarter and raised about $140,000 in one month. Since then, we’ve sold millions in merchandise purely via ecommerce. 

Streaming distribution is growing but still smaller than merchandise.

Sponsors can help early creators but we rely less on them now because our community supports us directly.

SolarCards became a huge success. How did that come about?

A consultant suggested testing a trading card game on Kickstarter.

Because I had game development experience, I designed the card game, its mechanics and the business model, while Oliver figured out how to make it a reality. We integrated the game into the show itself. There’s even an episode explaining the rules that feels like a battle episode.

We thought people might see it as advertising. Instead, this video performed extremely well and reached millions of views.

SolarCards became what it is because it worked hand in hand with the idea of the show, it was well integrated into the universe, it had a solid community happy to engage and support our show, and it was easy to buy through our online store.

But more than that, it all came from the solid partnership Oliver and I share: we can develop and execute ideas thanks to our unique skills.

Turning viewers into paying fans is difficult. What actually works?

You have to accept that conversion rates may be small. But those fans need to feel part of something.

We dedicate around a minute per episode to explain Patreon and merchandise through character-driven segments.

And we show the results. As the show improved in quality and episode length, people could see where their support was going.

Discord also creates social proof. People share card pulls, discuss episodes, and build community identity. There’s also a Discord chat only Patreons have access to where they can discuss next week’s episodes.

Looking back, what would you do differently if you started Solar Balls today?

If we had strong resources from day one, I might experiment with a larger pilot model similar to what shows like Digital Circus did.

Nowadays, we can’t just switch to 3D animation since our current style is very defined.  Sometimes improving the graphics too much can actually alienate audiences who love the original look.

I would also introduce Patreon earlier and tighten serialization sooner, since this also helps get the show onto streaming platforms.

What’s next for Solar Balls?

We’re expanding across more platforms and strengthening the transmedia approach. The content formula for the show is about 70 percent entertainment and 30 percent education, but we want to have a bigger presence in the world of education through other projects.

Beyond this, we’re releasing a Solar Balls movie this year focused on one of the characters. And outside of SolarBalls, we’re also developing a new 3D animation IP which is our most significant investment to date. Our vision is to build its success using a business model similar to The Amazing Digital Circus. It’s ,called ‘Run Monster Run!’, and we will publish it on YouTube this summer.