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.

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.

Robomodo

In the nine month period I was at Robomodo I produced quite a bit of video game art. I believe I worked on seven character with alternate snow and skate outfits for Tony Hawk: Shred. We had some stringent deadlines so working fast and consistently was paramount. We'd sometimes finish characters from start to finish in 10 working days. My time there ended with a swooping lay off of about 50 of us, but I don't regret working there. I learned a whole lot and won't soon forget my experience there. There were good hard working people at Robomodo.

Paddy

My family took care of a West African grey for several years in Lagos, and while this is a bust of a macaw, I thought I'd give him a mention. He was an annoying, lovable bird, and quite entertaining. Here's to you Paddy.

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.

A new Sungbo sketch. I'm sporadically working on the project while juggling others. Finding the balance between the new day job and personal work eludes me at the moment, but I'm working at it and getting settled in Seattle. I also started using a cintiq at work and its a revolution really. I don't know how some people prefer wacom tablets. I shall be getting a cintiq as soon as I can save enough to appease the hefty, substantial, cintiq gods.

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!

Cirque du DD

I don't usually redesign established characters, but a couple of friends of mine are involved in what's called the Superhero Costume Coalition and I thought I'd thrown in my two cents. The redesign blog can be found here along with my friends' similar efforts. Enjoy!

Timeworn

A long standing and mysterious member of Stein's crew, Denarii has been around for ages and he has seen and experienced a rough history that has hewn deep, salient lines in his careworn face.

Greed and Virtue

Two more characters from the Jupiter Jonah camp! The comic is begining to take shape, with Shobo doing a few more script revisions and yours truly concepting a few more characters before we start the comic in earnest. For now enjoy this sneak peak of Stein, the captain of the pirate ship, the Avarice, and Prospero, a freed manservant/gladiator that aids Jonah on his many adventures. Also for more Jonah stuff, check out Shobo's suhweet desktop wallpapers here and here. More coming soon! hopefully this Friday soon! so stay tuned!

A little hiatus

Sorry for the leave of absence folks. At the beginning of the month I moved to Chicago and started work as a Character Artist at Robomodo! Its been busy and fantastic so far, getting comfortable with a new environment, learning new tools and meeting good people. Have no fear though, ladies and gents, I still intend to work on some of the personal projects you've read about on the blog. Unfortunately, nothing to show right now, but there's some illustrations a' brewin'.

Oh and one last thing. Here is an interview I did with an art collective in Memphis last year called Flier Arts.

Updated Reel for the New Year

Kenneth S. Coker Demo Reel 09 from Kenneth Coker on Vimeo.

All the character modeling work I did in 2009 along with some recent illustrations and drawings done over the past 3 years. All presented in glorious HD, which you can watch over at Vimeo. Constructive criticism is quite welcome.

Ending the year with style

This here is Jonah's adventuring partner, Funlola, as mentioned earlier. Again, her design is based on my brother, Shobo's concept here, and although I changed some things about her I'd say I stuck pretty close to the original design. It must seem kind of annoying posting these character images without describing their back stories, but I must as I don't want to harm any story element Shobo intends to use in the future.

Well, I'm glad I got this final post in before the end of the year. I'm thinking 2010 is going to be a pretty interesting year, lots of exciting projects in the works for me. Also who knows, maybe some Croatian scientist is getting ready to unveil the worlds first functioning matter teleporter... fingers crossed.

Jonah lives!

So over the last few months work on Jonah has admittedly been slow, as a combination of freelance illustration work and learning new techniques hampered speed, however I learned several new things in the process of creating a fully rigged character from scratch. A lot of toenail-biting frustration and ludicrously long technical problem solving hours finally added up to the fact that I can now animate Jonah with a decent animation friendly rig that is not the rubbish, buggy rig system I used for my animated short earlier this year. I've also almost finished rigging Funlola as well so stay tuned for a very short test animation in the near future. For now enjoy Jonah's first hero shot in full Technicolor glory.

N:B: Been forgotting to mention that Jonah won the Best Bust/Character award at the Queen of the Rocketmen Hardcore Modeling Challenge at CG Society earlier in the year. You can see the work in progress thread here also.

Wood Spirits

Amazing. Two posts in one week! Setting standards that I'm pretty sure I can't maintain. Anyway since I enjoyed the process and subject matter so much, I felt compelled to do more sketches for the Eredo project. These are two common wood spirits that inhabit the forest of Eredo, referred to by Yoruba people as Oro/Iwin. Also I forgot to mention in the last blog post that I attended a lecture by animation legend Bill Plympton earlier this month at MCA, and got to meet him briefly thanks to my old animation professor. He seemed like an affable person and it was just fantastic learning about his techniques and philosophy.

Sungbo

I've been doing a lot of illustration lately and I decided to channel some of that energy toward a personal project. These are two quick sketches of the main antagonist for a project I've been developing in my spare time. Her name is Queen Sungbo and about a thousand years ago she once ruled over a really large portion of Southern Nigeria, specifically the area North East of present day Lagos. She was a childless widow and commissioned the building of Africa's largest earthwork, a 100 mile long (circumference) system of 20 meter high ramparts and ditches surrounding present day Ijebu Ode. I'm still working out the story of Eredo so I won't even try and explain any of it now, however Eniola as seen previously on the blog is the story's heroine.