Artist Highlight: Jake Wyatt

It's been ages since I last posted a blog highlighting the work of another artist. I saw Jake Wyatt's short film, Metro first in 2012 and thought it was wonderful, but I recently stumbled across his tumblr and I'm just spellbound. Gaze upon the magnificence of his work. His work on the Necropolis web comic in particular just makes my heart ache. Brilliant draftsmanship, texture, ethereal color, and unusual storytelling. I've found a kindred spirit. Cheers, Mr. Wyatt.

Panels from Necropolis by Jake Wyatt

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.

Deep

Some time ago, I worked with Shane Acker and Benthos Studios to create this character sculpt for an upcoming project called Deep. Some of the character concept art, created by Laurel D Austin can be seen here. The project uses Valve's engine Source Engine to aid in the creation of its cinematic visuals. It was a great experience working within an art style I thoroughly enjoyed and with an art director I learned a tremendous amount from.

Isaak

Here's the rest of Isaak the Cossack.

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.