That Tee shirt

Just wanted to post a selection of fun things related to Outcasts of Juiter of the last few months. The test t-shirt came last week and it looks excellent! We'll be putting in the full order soon. The 1st test proof of the comic came by a couple of weeks ago and there is a process image of the Denarii minis coming together too. 

One last thing, my work got featured as an editor's pick on Artstation here and on the Nigerian contemporary style site, AIM Business here. Good times I say.

#1 Done and Dusted!

Phew! Sometime last week I finished work on Outcasts of Jupiter. I loved every bit of working on Outcasts and I'm so glad my brother and I got the chance to realize our dream.The digital comics will be sent out to our dear Kickstarter backers quite soon. We've sent it to a select few for proof reading and general editing, but I must say I'm a very relieved man at the moment. The next few months will be the journey to see it printed and that's another level of excitement. I'll post a few process pages here and there in the interim. Of course, till then you can see even more news related to the project here.

Le Trou de Rat

The Outcasts of Jupiter Kickstarter has been both draining and highly exhilarating to run, but lo! I have managed to complete another page for you wary traveller. Sit a while and enjoy another slice of this tale we're trying to release upon the world.

Shobo and I also got interviewed by Chris Sains over at Capeless Crusader. Check it out!

Outcasts of Jupiter; Page previews!

Here is a small preview of the first two pages of Outcasts of Jupiter. The Kickstarter has been up for a week now and we're making steady progress. It's not a trivial whim when a long held dream is fulfilled. There are some wonderful people out there making it happen.

Outcasts of Jupiter Kickstarter!

Hey everybody! We launched our Kickstarter today for our very exciting science fiction comic, Outcasts of Jupiter. Shobo, Funlola and I couldn't be more excited!

Outcasts of Jupiter is a new, scifi adventure comic written by Shobo Coker and drawn by Shofela Coker. Our story takes place on Earth, in 3125, in the fictional City of Seven Faces, a visually and culturally rich cliff side city in our version of Morocco. The exotic City of Seven Faces is a mysterious place, full of strange secrets, slavers, gangsters and wanted criminals.

You can visit the Kickstarter here!

Denarii Sculpt

This is the the sculpt of Denarii I mentioned earlier. The final step will be a 7 inch, 3d printed figure produced as a reward for one of the tiers of our Kickstarter campaign for the Outcasts of Jupiter comic. Here are some of Shobo's words to describe the character:

'Powerful and ruthlessly efficient, all wired energy and tension, Denarii is gifted with absolute fearlessness and the unique ability to infiltrate just about any structure with extreme efficiency.

Shof designed him as a man of Afar ancestry. Denarii is a descendant of the once great Kush empire in Northern Africa, where the Blue and White Nile's meet.  He is quiet, noble, and kind, with a strict personal code of honor and a character stained by a black temper and a weakness for drink. 

A man of few words, he prefers action to chatter and harbors a strong dislike of the facade of modern civilization.

If Sulesh is the brains of the group, Denarii is its conscience, its beating heart, its compassion and its instrument of swift, terrible justice.'

Here are some sketches I based the model on as well as turnarounds. If you'd like to see some WIP images, head over to the Coker CoOp blog for an excellent read on this sculpt's progression from an idea to a fully fledged 3d character. Seeing the WIP images collected in one spot, it is astounding to see how much the character evolved. Enjoy!

Outcasts of Jupiter

My brother and I have been fervently working on a comic project for the last several months and we've decided this week to officially announce plans for an exciting Kickstarter for it! The campaign will be going up within the week so please keep your eyes peeled. For now, here is the cover, a little taste of adventure. Do you believe in adventure?

Denarii Mini

So the comic my brother and I are working on is coming along nicely. It now has a name- Outcasts of Jupiter. You can read about the process it took to develop the name here. We are gearing up for a big announcement for the comic, so please check back soon. This cute little guy is a mini version of a larger sculpt for the project. Denarii is one of four of the Outcasts of Jupiter. If you want to see some WIP images of the sculpt, head over here. I also got an earlier version of him 3d printed (My first 3d print!) and it looked much better than expected. The print below came from Sculpteo. Exciting times!

Denarii is coming

To Kickstarter

Coker CoOp

Here's visual development for a short comic my brother and I are working on for the new year. It's a tale from the Jonahverse. Layouts and more visual development work for it are done and I'm so excited to start work on it. We've set up a site that will serve as a news hub for all things Jonah related. There will be lots of goodies coming to the site in the future so keep an eye out. We're CokerCoOp. Which includes Funlola (my sister), Shobo (brother) and I.
For now though, Christmas with the family. Happy holidays everyone!

Update: If you'd like to view a process blog post of this image head over to this link. I detail thoughts on color and decision making from the sketch phase to the final image.

Isaak

Here's the rest of Isaak the Cossack.

Process

A little while ago, a certain someone accused me of not being comfortable showing the 'ugly' side of my work; my process. Sigh, he may have been right, so today here's SIX AMAZING EASY STEPS it took to do this Jupiter Jonah poster. Now you can do it too.

Isaak sculpt: Drawing and sculpting

Every time I look at the sculptures and maquettes of Kent Melton (a great sculptor I was introduced to recently) you understand why Disney and Pixar and recently Laika have trusted his 2d to 3d translations for decades.
Whenever I sculpt a drawing, the relationship between the two practices is always quite striking. I never feel that I need the sculpt to look exactly like the drawing. I'm looking to capture the spirit of the drawing and hopefully improve on the definition of its personality.
When done most of my personal sculpts become references I use for a project either 2d animation or comics. Having a sculpt to refer to for drawing proportions and technical details is great, but more importantly the sculpt is a solid base to build on. The sculpt gives me insight for better visual consistency, weight distribution in my drawings, expression, etc and even aids muscle memory involved in drawing the character. To summarize, the manner in which the two practices inform one another is just a fantastic cycle.

Happy Birthday Shobo!

Roughly five years ago, my brother, Shobo drew this gem. Since then Jonah has been through obvious transformations (he got some clothes, heh). A script has been written, a full cast of characters, a universe fleshed out, with a comic set to be put to paper soon. We work on it whenever we can with silly things like day jobs and a small matter of 3,000 miles of geography hindering progress on this project that's become a dream of ours. I drew this as a gift for him. I feel incredibly grateful because like many things in my life, Shobo shared Jupiter Jonah with me. Cheers, Shobo, have a good one.

Cool guys don't look at explosions

I thought I'd end the year with a measure of style and something I wish I could work on more often. I'm constantly thinking of Jonah, but never have the time to properly devote time to the comic because of other obligations.

For me, 2011 has been one of my most frantic years in recent memory. Moving twice to two different cities, once from the horrendously cold/windy, but vibrant city of Chicago, to the rainy, contemplative city of Seattle and then on to California... lots of driving, sigh, but hey the weather is great!

It hasn't been the easiest of years but there were some bright spots. I got to see my little sister graduate from college and for the first time in 6 years I'm currently spending Christmas with my parents. I started working in San Diego and its quite nice so far. I got to go to the San Diego Comic con and met some artists I respect quite a bit, and saw some things in retrospect as a videogame/comic nerd growing up in Nigeria, I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. I read some influential graphic novels this year, like Asterios Polyp, Daytripper, Petrograd, as well as novels this year that strengthened my resolve for the vision of Jupiter Jonah. One of them was Herge's biography. I've always loved Tintin and my brother and I often talk about how we'd like to develop Jonah in that iconic vein. I think it's easier to do something when you know its been done with some measure of laudable success before. Reading about Herge's life, his successes and failures reading about his personal life and work ethic was a small revelation. All in all I'd say it was a decent year.

Happy 50th!

That's right! 50 years ago Nigeria got its independence from the British. Its has been a tumultuous 50 years to say the least, but there have been small and formidable triumphs along the way especially in the arts and literature. October 1st is also special because that is the day our titular hero's journey began.

Jupiter Jonah's cast for book 1, The Eye of Oduduwa is more or less complete here from left to right; Denarii, best buddies Blass and Rashidi, Captain Stein, Jonah, Prospero, and Funlola along with the Baron Kookoomba looming hungrily above. Rest assured, work on Jonah is alive and kicking. There is also a variant poster designed by my brother, Shobo for your viewing pleasure on his blog here.

Once again Happy Independence day to every Nigerian out there!

Timeworn

A long standing and mysterious member of Stein's crew, Denarii has been around for ages and he has seen and experienced a rough history that has hewn deep, salient lines in his careworn face.

Greed and Virtue

Two more characters from the Jupiter Jonah camp! The comic is begining to take shape, with Shobo doing a few more script revisions and yours truly concepting a few more characters before we start the comic in earnest. For now enjoy this sneak peak of Stein, the captain of the pirate ship, the Avarice, and Prospero, a freed manservant/gladiator that aids Jonah on his many adventures. Also for more Jonah stuff, check out Shobo's suhweet desktop wallpapers here and here. More coming soon! hopefully this Friday soon! so stay tuned!

Ending the year with style

This here is Jonah's adventuring partner, Funlola, as mentioned earlier. Again, her design is based on my brother, Shobo's concept here, and although I changed some things about her I'd say I stuck pretty close to the original design. It must seem kind of annoying posting these character images without describing their back stories, but I must as I don't want to harm any story element Shobo intends to use in the future.

Well, I'm glad I got this final post in before the end of the year. I'm thinking 2010 is going to be a pretty interesting year, lots of exciting projects in the works for me. Also who knows, maybe some Croatian scientist is getting ready to unveil the worlds first functioning matter teleporter... fingers crossed.

Jonah lives!

So over the last few months work on Jonah has admittedly been slow, as a combination of freelance illustration work and learning new techniques hampered speed, however I learned several new things in the process of creating a fully rigged character from scratch. A lot of toenail-biting frustration and ludicrously long technical problem solving hours finally added up to the fact that I can now animate Jonah with a decent animation friendly rig that is not the rubbish, buggy rig system I used for my animated short earlier this year. I've also almost finished rigging Funlola as well so stay tuned for a very short test animation in the near future. For now enjoy Jonah's first hero shot in full Technicolor glory.

N:B: Been forgotting to mention that Jonah won the Best Bust/Character award at the Queen of the Rocketmen Hardcore Modeling Challenge at CG Society earlier in the year. You can see the work in progress thread here also.