Mince Pies Baby! MINCE PIES!

It's Christmas Eve here and I'm chowing down on homemade mince pies and sipping on Amarula, hoping against hope I got a PlayStation 3 controller so I can nail some insurgent scumbags in Call of Duty 4. I'm also typing the script for Jupiter Jonah, somewhere around page 9 at the moment, it's going rather well.

Anyway, I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Love,

Shobo.

Oh My Grud!

These are some ball point pen sketches BJ made of three of the major Orishas in the Yoruba pantheon, Olorun, the Sky God, Olokun, Goddess of the Seas and Marshes, and Esu, the Trickster. They were done a little while back, and their designs have changed a wee bit since then, but these will most likely be at the back of the book in "making of" section, plus I felt like sharing since it's been a while. I've included a short excerpt from the novel's bible, though that's unlikely to be seen by anyone but myself really. It just gives a little background on these characters.

"At the birth of the universe were the twin consciousnesses Olorun, and his sister Olokun. For an age Olorun and Olokun were a balance with each other, until the birth of Esu, a child-like trickster who introduced an unstable element to the cosmic equation. A rift soon grew between Olorun and Olokun, thanks in no small part to the machinations of their younger sibling. This rift grew in emotional intensity till it became manifest in physical form. Within a single day the ether became sky and space and sea. Olorun became the keeper of the sky, Olokun dwelled in the murky seas, and Esu floated in the space between and paid both frequent visits to torment his brother and sister."

Okay, so that's it for now, I may fool around a bit with trying to color these images since BJ's still slacking off on getting some drawings done and instead seems to be consumed by "real work", pah! Also, I figure next time I might as well drop a synopsis for the first book since the script's pretty much done.

This one's a little late...

Should'a been out around Halloween, but working on the script for the graphic novel (which is now called Orisha's by the way) took precedence. Again this isn't anything from the actual graphic novel, it's just an image BJ sent over for me to practice coloring with.

The Slave and The Crown

Three different posts, three different coloring styles. I think I'm gonna work on getting better at the first, I prefer the softer almost pastel look.

BJ gave me this piece to color, it's the cover from a book he's doing titled "The Slave and The Crown". I really want to know what's in the bag.

No Paint, No Gain.

So yeah, Bolaji's slacking off on providing pencils for me to practice with so I had to find these pencils on the net. It's not really anywhere near the subject material we'll be dealing with, but I get to practice. Unfortunately the source file was pretty tiny at 72dpi. Does anyone know where to get good pencils to practice on? Anyway, I'm not entirely satisfied with the piece, still lacks those "lighter tones" Erica mentioned were missing in the last image, and the characters seem pasted in. Still workin'!

When Bad Bloggers Bite Back!

I've been busy. Busy with work and busy workin' on my super top secret, super project... which some of you might already know about. It's a pretty big project with a roadmap that stretches over a year into the future, but it has the potential to make dreams come true... or make me very poor.

I almost don't want to talk about it because I don't want to jinx it, but mostly because if (when) it ends up failing spectacularly y'all are gonna know about it.

But what the heck, I'll tell. I'm going to start a mainstream comic book publishing outfit here in Nigeria! Yes, it'll cost a lot of money, but what most of you don't know is that I'm actually a prince, and heir to the Wakandan fortune. Yes, it's going to be hard work, but I'm not entirely naive to the challenges, and I'm eagerly doing as much research as I can. Bottom line is that I'm excited about it.

I'm going the "Image Comics" route of publishing creator owned comics, starting of course with one of mine (my creative partner on the book will be a fellow named Bolaji, he'll be doing pencils). I'll be handling colors, lettering, layout and design, editing and the story. The first book is called "Orishas" and it's a sweeping, epic, period piece set just a hundred years after the creation of the world.

The art below isn't from the book, BJ's still working on designs for that. I'm done with writing issue one and am currently getting used to using a tablet to paint, and learning (slowly the art of lettering... and it really is an art). We're going for something of a compromise between the digitally colored look of most comics and something hand painted. Dark Horse's "Conan" run has been very influential, as has Siku's work on Judge Dredd: Fetish.

Anyway, that's all for now, will post again soon, and more frequently even!

P.S. The publishing company will be called "Atomic Lore".

When Animals do Human-Like Things

So yeah, I'm not quite dead yet, despite my absence from the blogging. Been busy with work for QJ, some boooooring website design work for a travel agency, and some design work for a company that's making a videogame. All in all, fairly boring stuff.

However, I figured that even if I can't put up new pages of the Robot's Story just yet, I can at least put up some pics of home.

Page the third...

Inked mostly by candlelight and with the blood of a thousand soldier ants. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but now it's done I can move on to my FULL PAGE SPREAD! And yeah, I'm starting to get irritated drawing these on 8.5x11, I'll be doing Jonah on 11x17 for sure.

In other news, I'm about to head out on the town and pick up a tasty shawarma! We might be headed to go see Fantastic Four tomorrow, I have no expectations so... Still don't have my new laptop yet :(

Best Time Ever To Be a Conan Fan

I can't claim to be a long time fan, but my dad collected the old Marvel issues that were drawn by John Buscema (he never got the ones by Barry Windsor-Smith) when I was a kid. I hated and the Ahnolt movies though (The Beastmaster's where it's at for 80's sword and sorcery flicks). More recently though, I've begun reading Howard's original Conan stories and find myself unable to stop.

It seems now more than ever great Conan related media is crawling out of the wood-work, awesome work by Cary Nord, Kurt Busiek, Mike Mignola etc on the ongoing Dark Horse regular run, and gorgeous looking mini-series' like The Jewels of Gwahlur adapted by P. Craig Russel (seriously, I'm in love with this page). Of course there's also a really awesome looking game in development called Age of Conan, set across Aquilonia, Stygia and Cimmeria. It's a massively multiplayer online game that looks to stay true to the Hyborean age.

However, the jury's still out on Conan: Red Nails, an animated movie featuring some A-list voice actors, but with a questionable look. I almost feel as though they ought to forgo inks and extensive clean-up animation for the production, leave the lines rough and alive. I have to admit though, I'm not so sure how I feel about Ron Perlman as both the voice of Hellboy and Conan.

Like I said, great time to be a Conan fan.

Oh yeah, and page three of Robot's Story ain't done yet.

Oh yeah! I deliver!

Barely! I said I'd finish page two today (page 1 is right here) and despite having to attend a stuffy informal lunch (the kind with multiple knives and forks on the table) I managed to do just that. Don't hold your breath for page three though...

I'm not quite as pleased with this page, or maybe it just wasn't as much fun. The next page will be even worse because it comes before a page I really want to draw, so I'll have to take care not to rush through it. There are some things I like though, like the marks on the Robot's monitor (which weren't there in his previous incarnations).

I figure at some point I should decide where this story's going.

Yay, new stuff!

Fresh from the inkers, here's the first page of the Robot's Story, as promised. I hope to finish page two by tomorrow night.

OK, These Are Old...

But I like 'em. It's an interpretation of a (hauntingly beautiful) poem written by my ex-girlfriend, Ashley. It was drawn as a homework piece for a sequential narrative class I had with The Grand Nagus.

I actually still like it which is why it's getting air time here. There is another reason for its appearance though, I'm working on a short piece that includes this robot character right now as a warm up to The Adventures of Jupiter Jonah.

Avast there, ye scurvy landlubber!

In case you hadn't guessed already, I just came back (yesterday really) from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean with the whole family. I don't know if the movie was actually good, but I really enjoyed the experience. It was the first time we were all able to go see a movie together and it was wonderful to sit down and just soak it all in with the whole team.

In other news I should be getting a shiny new laptop shortly with some killer specs that should allow me to test run the latest games more efficiently (work related, of course).

And then there's internet access, which has been driving me up the wall - that and I've been dodging "old friends" as much as possible lately.

Jupiter Jonah Lives!

Sort of, I'm not yet quite satisfied with the details of his face, the look of his backpack, whip or ray gun, but it's getting there. I expect I'll be doing sketches of those over the next few days. Anyhoo, time for me to have a much needed shower and prepare for soccer at the park!

Ugh.. Packing.

It's even worse than usual this time, mainly because I'm not entirely certain whether I'll be coming back or not. What knick-knacks, do-dads and comfy memories can I afford to leave behind? I keep lifting the bag and wondering whether I've hit the 50 pound limit yet (I don't have any scales).

It's going pretty slowly actually, oddly enough it's the little things I find myself most drawn to and unwilling to part with. My Alex Ross designed Superman statue, my Conan statue (my toys in general), various books I've picked up and been given by friends, and hard-to-find DVD's ( hard to find back home anyway) that are basically comfort for the soul, The Witches, The Lost Boys, The Goonies, my A-Team collection.

It's strange because I feel compelled to go on a mad buying spree just to pick up the geek bare necessities that might be hard to find back home, but I know that's a waste of money.

I'm not looking forward to when it finally hits me that I'll be leaving the best group of friends I've ever had.

Anyway, not much to show in the way of art, but hopefully my next update will show the first image of a character I've been working on lately, Jupiter Jonah, Spacefaring African. Still a lot of design work left to go, but that's the fun part.

Off to a bang!

Well, it's time to start yet another project destined for failure methinks! I'm actively working on quite a few projects at the moment, one's a community forged videogame production project headed by former Shiny Entertainment President, Dave Perry. I'm a member of one of the community's many mushroom development groups known as Team Quietus (cryptic, I know). Our recent task was to come up with some track designs for the game (which is a racing game). I wasn't given as much notice as I'd like, but I was able to cobble some stuff together, and here it be:




















Though it's pretty simple I'm happy with the way this one turned out. I haven't had much experience using a pen tablet (not as much as I'd like anyway) so i think it turned out decent.



This one I'm not so crazy about, I think I tried to get a little fancy too fast, and got a little carried away with the dodge and burn tools (which I don't think are great for painting anyway). Lesson learned I s'pose. I also had to rush the inks on this, shame one me!



I'm really not happy with the way this one turned out, it's just so... bleh. I did pencil, ink and paint it in just a few hours on a mad rush to beat the deadline though.



This one was definitely my favorite one to draw, but again, I didn't have the time to ink or color it like I'd have liked.



Ah yes, the straggler. The one I only finished inking minutes before the deadline. Incomplete inks, no background to speak of, and no colors... sigh.

More stuff to come soon!