Artist Research: Bayo Akinsiku

Born in Leicester city, England to Nigerian parents, Bayo Akinsiku (Siku) moved to Lagos, Nigeria as a young boy and grew up there with his father, eventually ending up studying many disciplines in art at the Yaba College of Technology. He majored in Graphic Design and graduated with honors. He left for England again and sought work as a Graphic designer, but soon grew tired of that career and began looking for a job as a comic book illustrator. After harrowing trials he was hired by 2000AD comics (Britain's largest comic publisher). He began work on Judge Dredd magazine, painting a full length graphic novel called Fetish; a story with Judge Dredd in a post apocalyptic Africa. His style came to full glorious fruition here, although of course distinctive work like that took few people aback because of the hyper stylized color schemes and strangely enough Judge Dredd's chin. The 'chin' actually created a split in the fans of the Judge Dredd series; the pro-Siku Judge Dredd fans and on the other end of the spectrum fans who actually took the time to set up an anti-Siku website, despite this Fetish was well received and widely acclaimed. He has since worked as a concept artist for Nexus, Nickelodeon, Marvel Comics and was a Visual Director for Elixir studios where he worked on the critically acclaimed video game Evil Genius. His style hyper exaggerates the human form elongating planar anatomy, all brought to finish with acrylic paint or digital coloring (Photoshop and Illustrator) and sometimes 3d work using 3ds max. His most recent work is a modern day adaption of the stories of the bible called the Manga Bible which was actually praised by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
His Site

Artist Research: Tim Sale

American Eisner award winner Tim Sale was born on May 1t 1956 in Ithaca, New York. He spent most of his early life in Seattle Washington and attended universit there. for two years until he moved to NY again to study at the School of Visual Arts and eventually the John Buscema workshop. After school he did several odd jobs and eventually started working in comics like Myth Adventures and Thieves' world. He works a lot with writer Jeph Loeb and has produced several graphic novels with him for DC and Marvel including Batman: The Long Halloween and Daredevil yellow. He is currently working on the tv series Heroes in which his drawings and paintings are the featured as the work of the fictional Iaac Mendez, a precognitive artist.
His style has a timeless 50s style sensibility to it and uses old comic book color palettes. His recent work is colored with watercolor paints. His color palette is usually a compelling element o his work even though he is medically colorblind. Tim Sale is an avid soccer fan!!
His Site

Artist Research: Esad Ribic

Esad T. Ribic is a Croatian illustrator who in recent history has done work for Marvel comics. He started out as a cover illustrator for titles like Wolverine and X-men, until he started doing work on graphic novels like Loki and most recently Silver Surfer's Requiem with writer J. Michael Straczynski. His past work includes Dutch comics like Shotgun Mary: Son of the Beast and Warrior Nun Frenzy. His work draws from a naturalistic standpoint and has been compared to Alex Ross who also paints all his comic work. Ribic's style however uses a more muted color scheme than Ross.
A link to his work

Artist Research: James Jean

James Jean is a Taiwanese- American free lance illustrator who has been working in the comic book industry since 2001. He grew up in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey and graduated from the School of Visual Arts, New York. He moved to Los Angeles and started working for DC comics as a cover illustrator for Batgirl and the Green Arrow, which garnered him several Eisner Awards and two gold medals from the Society of Illustrators. His best nown work today is for the comic book Fables published by Vertigo comics. He has designed over 75 covers for the series which have one more Eisner awards. Some of his other clients include Time Magazine, The New York Times, Prada, Playboy, etc. His style is naturalistic with elements of Asian design (flattening out form), a strong design sense in general, using vibrant and unexpected color that elevate his images into a very unique realm. His working method ranges from pencils straight to digital color with use of bendai dots as design, digitally colored charcoal drawings, and digitally enhanced acrylic paintings.
His site

Artist Research: Alex Maleev

Maleev is a comic book illustrator of Bulgarian descent that arrived in the U.S. in 1994 and enrolled in the Joe Kubert School for a year. He is best known for his collaborations with writer Brian Michael Bendis on their acclaimed Daredevil series. He has also worked for DC doing Batman No man' land and worked with Bendis on a Halo miniseries comic published by Marvel comics. His first American commissions were done on Todd Mcfarlane's Sam and Twitch series. He has worked on the comic The Crow, Civil War, Hellboy and New Avengers. In Bulgaria he is famous for Godan and Carthel of Dead published in Riko magazine. His work has a grainy, film noire quality (16 mm) that lends itself well to characters like Daredevil and Batman. If my brushwork could look like any artist it would be like his, which is very descriptive, but retains a lot of character and energy. Like Tim Sale hi work appears in NBC's heroes instead as Syler's precognitive paintings. He has also done work as a storyboard artist for movies like Bone Collecter, Hell's Kitchen, etc.
Maleev's site

Artist Research:Yoji Shinkawa

Yoji Shinkawa is a Japnese illustrator born in Hiroshima, Japan on December 25, 1971. His career began in Konami at the age of 22 working on the Policenauts videogame as CG director. He is the only artist hired by the company to have received an S- grade on his portfolio. He has worked as a concept artist for the Metal Gear series for all five games. He also worked on the Zone of the Enders games doing concept art. His work is influenced by Yoshitaka Amano, Aubrey Beardsely, Jean Giraud(Moebius) and anime art lie Gundam. His art style is as such:
'Shinkawa says he tries to keep his work fresh by using new styles all the time. He prefers drawing by hand, but when he does draw with a stylus and computer, Painter is his program of choice for line work. Photoshop is also used, but only for painting. Most of his designs start on paper with a Pentel Brush Pen, and the lines are later scanned into a graphic program. One technique used to get a rough look in his sketches is to paint over the work repeatedly with thin black ink and correcting ink until it gets crispy. In the end, matiére from underneath shows up as if it were oil painted.' source

Artist Research: Yoshitaka Amano

Japanese illustrator born on July 28, 1952 in Shizuoka city, Japan. He began his career in animation for Tatsunoko Productions. His first paid project was Speed Racer and character design for shows lie Time Bokan and Gatchaman Force: Battle of the Planets (G-force). He was influenced by pop artist Peter Max, Ukiyo-e woodcuts and art nouveau during this time in animation. He left Tatsunoko productions in 1980 and began work as a freelance illustrator. First working on Vampire Hunter D novel illustrations which was later adapted to animation in 1985 (which he wasn't happy with) and again in 2001 (which was definitely a much better attempt). He has worked as a concept artist for Square- Enix's Final Fantasy series since the first game. Amano worked on Sandman: Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman (nominated for a Hugo award) and has worked for Marvel comics and done album art for the Japanese power metal band Galneryus. He has also done theater and costume design
His art style relies on water color and delicate brushwork and is sci-fi and fantasy inspired. His characters often have very pale skin and an unsettling look about them. He also uses muted, subtle color palettes.
His Site

Artist Research: Craig Mullins

Mullins is an American illustrator born in 1964 in California. He was classically trained at the Pitzer College of Claremont, California (for two years) and moved to enter College of Design. He was introduced to digital art with the program Dubner Paintbox in 1987 and now created most of his work digitally using Corel Painter and Photoshop in his studio in Hawaii, where he currently lives. he is influenced by Frank Frazetta and John Singer Sargent whereI think most of his expressive brushwork originates. Mullins has worked as a concept artist for videogames like Halo, done book covers and film matte paintings for The Matrix Revolutions, Armageddon, Apollo 13, etc.
His digital style is heavily informed by his accomplished skills as a traditional oil and watercolor painting. He is a great reminder to me that you need traditional skills to inform your digital stuff or it just looks bland and very banal. Mullins digital paintings also retain a fresh sketchy quality and also achieves various textures without photographic overlays which is very desirable (I think he does it with a multitude of custom brushes).
His site

Artist Research: Ashley Wood

Born in 1971 in Perth, Australia Ahley Wood is an art director/illustrator/ comic book artist that has worked in the U.K, Japan and the U.S. He worked in advertising agencies as produced work for galleries.He started work in England for 2000AD comics on Judge Dredd and later broke into the U. market working for Marvel comics and DC. He also worked on Spawn and other Todd Mcfarlane properties under Image comics. He has been around, but his definitive work was for the comic book adaptation of Metal Gear Solid which was later reworked into the world's first digital interactive comic on the PSP system. He created the comic called Tankgirl and another called Popbot which has a very avid cult following. He has also done album art and a lot of his Popbot characters have been made into statuettes. He is a Spectrum and Communication Arts Award winner and is an Eisner nominee.
His work has a very erratic quality about it, which is where most of the energy in his drawings come from. His painterly expressionist style has a thick and weighty feel than lend a solid and distinct presence to his work
Wood's site

Artist Research: Nathan Fowkes

American concept artist and illustrator Nathan Fowkes was trained in traditional media at the Art Center College of Design with honors. In recent years he has been teaching color, drawing and painting classes at the Lo Angeles Academy of Figurative Art and is working as a visual development artist at hte Dreamwors studio. His screen credits include The Prince of Egypt, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmarron, Shark Tale and Shrek stuff.
Fowkes renders his work mostly in traditional methods of charcoal, watercolor, or goauche. He is fluent with Photoshop digital painting a well, which is heavily informed by his traditional methods. His proficiency and skill with rendering portraits and landscapes is highly admirable because of the look of effortlessness the work achieves. Every stroke looks quick yet well considered givng the work a freshness that allows you to look at one piece of work for hours on end
His Blog.

Arab Jewel Thief

Here's another comic I did earlier in the semester. Vicki Sellick ( a classmate) created a comic with a ninja stealthily creeping through obstacles until it was revealed that he was stealing a cupcake. I thought it was fun so I followed it up with this one leaving where her comic left off.

Egungun comic

According to Yoruba belief spirits called Egungun are Iku's (Death) messengers. Traditionally during festivals among the Yoruba community, men masquerade themselves as Egungun in voluminous and fancy dress and dance in a parade meant to venerate ancestors. This is an original short story in comic format of the Egungun as I think they would operate according to Yoruba myth.

Egungun stick and ink sketches

Its the end of the semester so a post dump is due. Here are some of the highlights. The face close-up belongs to the comic that this character was for. I'll post it soon.