Light, Sweet Crude

For about a year and a half now I've been working with Shof and a mutual friend named Chris Feliciano Arnold on a new comic adaptation, a political thriller called Light, Sweet Crude. Last week we were able to get the first 8 pages together and show the comic off at Comic Con (by we, I mean Shof and Chris, I stayed put in Manila).

If you'd like to have a closer look and flip through the first 8 pages, you can do so here. Chris wrote the story and script, adapted from a short story he wrote and got published in Playboy in 2009. Shof did all the art, and I'm doing consultation on the project.

Much ablog about nothing.

For the past few weeks I've been feeling increasingly frustrated. I want to blog, but I can't figure out what to blog about. Everything seems so downright trivial! Well, not to me, to me it's actually important, but if I were not me and I was reading about the things the real me isn't blogging about, I'm pretty sure they'd be trivial. 

There's that, and there's the fact that I whenever I think about something truly blogworthy, I'd much rather be lying down. 

Enough! Let's get to the good stuff. Some time back I promised that I'd write about the process of creating a web comic I've been working on, the page below has actually been done for a few months but I'm only now getting around to posting it. I've got a new computer set up here in the Philippines and will at last be getting back to the project. This is actually a page from a third of the way into the book - I decided to start on page 11 you see. There's no text yet (apart from a font style test in the first panel), I hope to post more over the coming weekend.

Visions of the Gods.

I'm not entirely sure when this became an "art only" blog, it was never intended as such, it's always been my intention to write about the things that interest me day in and day out, so I'm going back to that.

That said, this new post is in fact, art related.

A little while back I decided that if I wanted to finish a project I've been thinking about for the past 12 years, then I'd have to actually start working on it (shock, awe). As such I've recently started work again on a project that I've called, for a long time now, Visions of the Gods, a name which barely seems appropriate these days as the story and tone have changed quite a bit, but a name which I'll probably end up keeping just because I'm too lazy to think of anything else.

Visions of the Gods or "Visions" for short, started out as something of an African take on Lord of the Rings, of course, this was before I decided I wasn't smart enough to attempt that. Over the years Visions has changed multiple times as I tried to figure out what sort of representation African comics and Nigerian comics needed.

There was a lot of stopping and starting along the way, and I've finally come to the decision that instead of working on what I thought was needed, I should just work the way I wanted (what a novel idea!). The result is hopefully something that mixes pulp and whimsy in equal measure, my two favorite things you see, I'm also hoping to make it an ongoing web series, posting pages sporadically as I finish them.

I've got an old script from about 2 or 3 years ago that I'm using as a spine, but I'm kind of winging it, and I'm trying to enjoy the process and learn from it.

From this point on, I'm going to be posting as much as I can about the process of writing and drawing Visions, in an attempt to chronicle the difficulty of creating a comic for any other artists struggling with similar endeavours. I'll also be talking about the decisions I make with my art and writing, why I make them, and it'll hopefully also be a cool little visual log of how my art changes over the course of the project.

Here's a panel from the page I'm currently working on.

Today, Nigeria turns 50. Here's some Jupiter Jonah.

So here's something Shof and I whipped up in time to post on Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence. As you can see, it features almost the entire main cast of Jupiter Jonah and the Eye of Oduduwa (lovingly rendered by my good brother). From left to right, there's the pirate trio of Denarii, Blass and Rashidi, and then the scourge of the seven systems, Captain Stein, Jonah himself, Prospero the gladiator, and Funlola, the renegade.

As a bonus, it's even tricked out in green, white and green! Be sure to check out Shof's blog, he's got another wallpaper he put together to commemorate today :)

A mural for Greensprings

Greensprings, for those that don't know, is my old high school. I have fond memories of Greensprings, mostly involving games of frantic football in the classrooms... with Fashionable Fashionate's bunched up socks...

Anyway, a couple of weeks back, my dad was asked to do a mural for a brand new kids library in the schools currently-under-construction new wing, and I took a stab at designing it myself, here's what I came up with.

Section 1 -

Section 2 -

Section 3 -

The whole piece -

It was an interesting experience because I had to take into account things like windows, corners and furniture which will be present in the physical location. I'm not painting the mural on the wall myself, but I'll post pictures of the end product once everything's done.

The thing about blogs...

is that the longer you leave them alone, the less likely you're ever to return to them. Shocking, I know.

What you see here are a pair of renders based on a design I worked on for my dad. We're building a children's library in a new school here in Lagos, and we thought it would be cool if the library had a really impressive Vernesque centerpiece that the kids could go up into and read for a bit. Hey! How about a bathysphere coming to rest in a docking station at some underwater city?

Construction is gearing up on the room, the bathysphere itself is going to be made out of fiberglass and wood, and the four walls and ceiling of the room are going to be fully painted so that the kids can "see outside" and have a great view of giant squid, schools of fish, a coral reef, and a massive city in the distance. At least that's the plan.

Two more Jonah wallpapers

I think these ones are nicer, I have my method down better and it shows (I hope). Once again, if you'd like to see some of 3D models I used in these, check out my brother's work on Jonah.

[Hi-Res Download Link]

[Hi-Res Download Link]

[Hi-Res Download Link]

Jonah-riffic Wallpaper!

He's a myth, he's a legend, he's nothing but a man!

Shof created the 3D model for this a while back, and I worked on the graphics for the poster but wasn't satisfied, after some tweaking though I'm finally happy enough to put this up. I've made it in three different sizes:

• 1280x720: [Download Link]

• 1680x945: [Download Link]

• 19200x1080: [Download Link]

Well... that's pretty cool!

Dad came home from work the other day and showed this to me. They are a pair of tile based mosaics put up by at a building on a jetty somewhere in Lagos. The mural on the right is based on a design he asked me to do last year.

There are (I think) two more murals to go up on the opposite side of the building. Obviously the building isn't quite done yet, but here are some better views of the murals:

The last of my embroidery

Well I'm all done with this project, frankly, not a moment too soon as after 70 designs, I was starting to run out of ideas.

This latest post covers the last 30 or so of the designs I did for the mysterious client known only as... Embroidery99!

Happy New Year!

Considering how long it's been, you'd be forgiven for expecting some sort of art dump, unfortunately you'll get no such satisfaction.

What I have here are is a failed page from Jupiter Jonah. After working on this on and off for a while I decided it just wasn't coming together. The process was far too involved and laborious, and I went from being excited about it to quickly realising it was a major pain. I started over using a more traditional pen and ink approach on paper, then scanning that in and coloring and I think that's what I'm going to stick with.

Below you'll find the initial sketch of the failed page, and failed page itself. Stupid failed page.

The news of the day is that Jonah isn't really my main focus at the moment, as I'm working on something with another Nigerian creator, hopefully, sooner rather than later I'll be able to share, but in the mean time; 

Layout Page

Just not workin'.

EmbRoidery, apply directly to the roid...

Some embroidery designs I did for a mysterious person on the interwebs. Hopefully I'll have something more exciting to show soon.

Ms Crabnasty's Castle in the Sky.

're looking for a programmer to help us out with Edward Usher (if you know someone talented in C++ do tell!) and in the mean time Richard and I decided to go ahead and start a much smaller, simpler game.

This is a bit of concept art for one of the levels in this other game, Ms Crabnasty and the Banished Ball, about a kid who loses her ball in her neighbours yard, her neighbour unfortunately, is Ms Crabnasty. Ol' Ms Crabnasty decides to punish the wee lass by, you guessed it, banishing her ball.

You take control of said ball and attempt to make your way across several story book themed worlds to get back to your little girl.

Portfolio submitted to MCA

The stuff of nightmares.

I'm plowing away at Jonah and I just got the layout for page 3 done . I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. You'll have to wait a few days for the finished version, but I've included a frame from the full page layout below. In it, our titular hero regards a rather large and seemingly bemused gastropod with a mixture of curiosity and just a tinge of terror.

The layout for page 3 took a lot longer than I expected as I'm quickly realising this book is probably going to have images that are a lot more detailed than I'd expected. There's also the fact that since I'm essentially starting the story about halfway through my original draft of the script, I'm having to do some narrative re-jigging (technical term) and I'm basically making up new scenes and dialogue on the fly to stitch things together. I hope this turns out okay.

Back to Jonah for a spell

Page 1 was done and dusted in just over a day, but after struggling a tad trying to figure out how I was going to approach Page 2 of Jupiter Jonah vol.1 - wherein our heroes find themselves hurtling toward earth at an alarming rate - I finally decided to scrap my initial sketch layout and start over. You can see below how closely page 1 mirrors my initial idea, and how much page 2 totally does the exact opposite.

You'll notice that these images are pretty small, this is because I figured it might not be the best idea to upload hi-res images of Jonah to the web just yet. That said, I think it's safe to post a few images in "you-can-barely-see-em-o'-vision".


Page 1, as you can see closely resembles the original idea I had for the layout, I wanted something reminiscent of those great Kirby space-vistas,, where space is a hundred different subtle colors, and the title card and text pretty much jump off the page and scream at you. however...
... this original layout for page 2 just didn't work. I felt it was somewhat indulgent to have another large, almost full page panel so soon after the first page, which was also a large full page panel. It really didn't help get the story moving at all. In fact, the only reason I felt drawn to this (nyuk! nyuk!) was because I was eager to draw all kinds of 50's style dials, levers, knobs and whatch-ma-bobbits for the interior of the crashing space ship. I also didn't really like the panel break being diagonal, it's dynamic sure, but JJ isn't really meant to be a dynamic book in that sense.

So I went for this. It's pretty different. They layout is a lot simpler and this "four rectangles a page" layout is one I'm likely to stick to for most of the book with only the occasional deviation. The reason being that I'd like Jonah to be easily adaptable to portable media devices like the Kindle, iPod, Smartphones and PSP, which all have widescreen aspect ratios. I'm also targeting delivery via outlets like the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, so I try to make sure the comic looks good and is legible on an HD screen.

Here's a detail of my favorite panel from page 2.

Anyway, I'm off to start work on page 3, wish me luck!

Another Jonah character!

Here's what I just got done. It's the design for the character of Funlola in Jupiter Jonah and the Eye of Oduduwa. Jonah runs into Funlola while a captive on board Rex Stein's space-pirateship and the two form a grudging friendship.

I was going for something kind of Buck Rogers-like for her.

Heeeeer'es Jonah!

Of course it isn't entirely finished, otherwise it wouldn't be an original "Shobo". His left hand is still missing since I have no idea how to draw it, but this was a lot of fun to finally put down on paper.

Hey!

... can you guess what this is?


Surely you must know Shof!