Wood Spirits

Amazing. Two posts in one week! Setting standards that I'm pretty sure I can't maintain. Anyway since I enjoyed the process and subject matter so much, I felt compelled to do more sketches for the Eredo project. These are two common wood spirits that inhabit the forest of Eredo, referred to by Yoruba people as Oro/Iwin. Also I forgot to mention in the last blog post that I attended a lecture by animation legend Bill Plympton earlier this month at MCA, and got to meet him briefly thanks to my old animation professor. He seemed like an affable person and it was just fantastic learning about his techniques and philosophy.

Sungbo

I've been doing a lot of illustration lately and I decided to channel some of that energy toward a personal project. These are two quick sketches of the main antagonist for a project I've been developing in my spare time. Her name is Queen Sungbo and about a thousand years ago she once ruled over a really large portion of Southern Nigeria, specifically the area North East of present day Lagos. She was a childless widow and commissioned the building of Africa's largest earthwork, a 100 mile long (circumference) system of 20 meter high ramparts and ditches surrounding present day Ijebu Ode. I'm still working out the story of Eredo so I won't even try and explain any of it now, however Eniola as seen previously on the blog is the story's heroine.

Egungun Concept

This is a small project I'm working on at the moment. This is an Egungun, a messenger of the Yoruba god of death, Iku. I will be using Zbrush to make a digital sculpt of the character over the next couple of weeks. He's supposed to be a character in the upcoming animation I'm slowly working on with my brother. I posted a concept image for the project a while ago here. If you know my brother, Shobo, please poke and prod him about completing the script. Oh and here is the original sketch of the character I did last year.

Side Project

Some weeks ago, the family decided that it would be kind of nice if we could all do drawings every week based on a common theme or idea. Well, we decided that we should do drawings for a story Shobo (my brother) and I are working on. So only Shobo and I did one this week, but we're hoping to rope the rest of the family in by our efforts. The story is about a little Nigerian girl who gets lost in a forest of spirits and that's all I'll say for now, mostly because the story is still quite in its rudimentary stages.