Roaches!

Found this gem tonight. From the last days working at Robomodo.

I thought her eyes were green

Continuing the lunch sketch series (dropped since January, haha), I decided to reinterpret one of my favorite movie heroines. I'm a great fan of Miyazaki. The sense of wonder and hope that he infuses into his worlds/stories is enviable. I rarely create reinterpretations of already existing characters, but I thought I'd break that rule this one time.

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.

Eko Atlantic city rises

A few months ago I shared some visual development work I did for an animated TV show my brother and I were working on called Ekologue. I thought I'd share some more.  These were mood pieces intended to capture the energy/spirit of the show. Slice of life type of stuff in the slums, dwarfed by the towering city in the distance.
With the recent completion of Eko Atlantic City's land reclamation off the shore of Victoria Island, Lagos I thought it might be timely to show this.

Cauliflowers

Fin

Prince

The idea for this sculpt came thanks to a Costa Rican fellow I play soccer with on Sunday.

New Habit?

I'm trying to make lunch sketches like this a habit.

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.

Ekologue

A couple years ago Shobo and I decided to pitch an animated TV show to an African TV network. The working title was Ekologue with the story set in the near future of Lagos, Nigeria and the currently under construction, Eko city. We had plot outlines, a show bible, character breakdowns, and quite a bit of visual development completed. The pitch ended up being a success, but for now the project has been shelved for various reasons. I thought I'd share some of the visual development that resulted from the project. Ekologue promised to cover a good breadth of the Nigerian human perspective and best of all, a look at how Lagosians would spin sci-fi tropes in their own unique way.
I finished a few more pieces illustrating set pieces that gave you a better idea of the world these characters lived in, but some other time maybe. Enjoy.

Argonautica

Last month I worked with the Chatterbox Audio Theater again to produce this illustration for their audio theater broadcast, Argonautica. As usual it was a pleasure working with them. You can listen to the excellent broadcast here.

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.

Light, Sweet Crude

Over the last year I've been working on a comic project with Shobo and Chris Feliciano Arnold. All info about the comic is located here. You can also see the first 8 pages of the comic. The comic is an adaptation of a short story published in playboy in 2009, written by Chris. It's a political thriller that takes place in Texas and the Niger Delta, told through several narrative points of view.We sort of unveiled this short segment at Comic-con last week and got favorable responses from some of the independent publishers we showed it to. Now let's see about getting this finished, shall we.

Light Sweet Crude

MAGNA CUM RIVETER

My lovely sis, Funlola, graduated from the Memphis College of Art last weekend. She majored in sculpture (metals) and finished with a magna cum laude. I'm super proud of her. IYAAAABOBOOOOO!

Here's looking at you kid ;)

You look so familiar

Have you ever tried to draw a face based on an impression of a person's expression? I find you always  come up with interesting results, so I tried it on this sculpt. Of course everyone unconsciously does this with whatever creative process they work on (implementing the familiar that is), but consciously applying this technique is quite fun. Five naira to the person who guesses who this sculpt's expression is based on.

There is a turn around image of the sculpt here.

Ace McD

Did this quick drawing when I first got my hands on the cintiq at work. I wanted to see how repsonsive it was with line work as opposed to a wacom tablet. It didn't disappoint.

Ho Fafhrd!! Hist, Gray Mouser!!

I recently read Mike Mignola, Al Williamson and Howard Chaykin's graphic novel adaptation of Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on a trip to Seattle and loved it! The titular characters' relationship with each other and adventures were quite the swashbuckling ride. The storytelling and art were great and the book jarred my early memories of fantasy adventure comic stories of that nature, like Conan and Thud the Barbarian (having strayed from them recently in my comic reading). Anyway, the images above were for a job test I did late last year and had I read Fafhrd at that time it might have helped visually inspire these images, but I think I did a decent job considering I've never drawn Western fantasy before.

Swan sketch

This is a quick digital sketch based on a still from the upcoming movie Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky's work as a director is always impressive, however, his willingness to reach out to worthwhile illustrators to collaborate with him on projects is part of what distinguishes him. He did so with illustration master Kent Williams for The Fountain graphic novel and once again now with the exquisitely striking Black Swan international posters. Hopefully after the film's release we'll get to know more about who designed them, but for now enjoy the simple sketch fueled by my enthusiasm for the film.

Note: The Swan Posters were created by London based design studio, La Boca. Their work is definitely worth a look.

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!