Chatterbox Audio Theater

Hypnosis

Silent Retreat

Over the last week, I worked on these illustrations for the wonderful people at Chatterbox Audio Theater in Memphis. They air live radio performances every month on WKNO, which can also be listened to on their site. In October they had a special Halloween program that they performed on the 31st from 7pm- 9pm which can be listened to here. I created two illustrations based on two stories from the program called Hypnosis, and Silent Retreat written by Robert Arnold, who is also the co-founder and executive director of Chatterbox Audio Theatre. They were really fun to work on as I got to experiment with some techniques and don't deal with material such as this very often Let me know what all ye in blogland think.

Funlola is bald!

Another character from my brother's comic. Her name is Funlola and yes, she's bald, uber tough, and she's Jupiter Jonah's fellow intrepid adventurer on their quest to find the Eye of Oduduwa. I stuck pretty close to my brother's original concept design because it captured her attitude perfectly. Her suit also appealed to me because of how simple, yet bold it is which you can see above and here. According to Shobo, she is part human, but mostly Jovian, an alien race of his making.

With the pictures of her and Jonah, I was hoping to achieve the intimidating physical presence that I perceived Funlola commanding over her peers in the comic. Right now I'm at the stage where I'm rigging the duo and all the texture work is done. So when I finally get some decent rigs done, you can all finally see them in color and maybe some animation... hopefully.

Africa Benson

Fell off the blog wagon for a little bit, but only because I've been quite busy working on a couple of projects, some of which I can't post just yet. Here is one I worked on in the last month for the writer/designer, Yegwa Ukpo also known as Spaceboy Nigeria. It was a pleasure working with him, and we had a lot to talk about the current state of Nigerian comics and entertainment. He commissioned me to do a T- shirt illustration of his new character, Africa Benson, a scientist and inter-dimensional traveler. I won't say much more than that about the character as you will be able to read more about her in the upcoming months on Yegwa's site and his upcoming comics. Anyway, the moment captured in the illustration depicts Africa's leap through an inter-dimensional warp portal. I wanted an iconic pose with lots of energy and strength. There are also concepts images and iterations it took to lock down her suit and final look. I would have liked to have kept the poncho in the final illustration but the pose would have made it look like a cape, which I didn't want. Let me know what you guys think.

The Edward Usher Project

Edward Usher Run cycle from Kenneth Coker on Vimeo.

I just joined up with my brother on a video game called the Edward Usher Project. Its a 2d adventure platformer that looks wonderful, plays great, and is loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's short story, The Fall of the House of Usher. I'm working on all the animations and character designs for the project and I have to say its quite fun working on 2d animation for a change. Here is a basic run and jump cycle I recently completed. Some of the frames seem kind of choppy because the game engine can only use 2 frames for the jump and 3 frames for the fall, but I think it looks pretty lively and stylized because of that. There's also a video of the game running with a stand in character here.
Anyway, I am however still working on an animatable 3d Jonah so have no fear, he'll show up before the end of the month... I hope.

The Space Faring African

As promised, the sculpt of Jonah. Still to come... the fully pose able, animated leading man.

Jupiter Jonah

So I have put creating a color image of Eniola on hold for a while, but I have not been resting on my laurels for the past few weeks. Eniola is a Zbrush sculpt only at the moment and not really animation friendly and for some time I've really wanted to practice a range of animation principles with a humanoid character. I will also be attending Siggraph from August 4th to the 6th, and I wanted another character to add to my portfolio for the job fair there.

Anyway Jupiter Jonah is a great character that my brother, Shobo Coker created a while ago for a comic of the same name. He is currently working on it and has some fantastic images of the characters on his blog here and here. I decided to put my spin on Jonah. Here are my concept sketches with some actual 3d models and sculpts, and animation tests soon to come. So here he is folks, my version of the intrepid Jupiter Jonah: Space Faring African!

I Got Interviewed!

... Interviewed by the good folks at the African Digital Network. You can read the interview here.
Exciting stuff. hehe

Shot Breakdown

Please click to read.

Demoreel '09

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

I finished my demoreel just in time for the end of the month. It spans the best of the cg work I've done over the last three years. Hopefully, this will be the key to getting a decent job in the animation/ videogame industry. The Shot Breakdown is here. Critiques would be much appreciated.

Eniola

Some may have noticed that the last few updates on my blog have been Zbrush models. Well, over the last few weeks I decided to move past my usual tinkering with the program and really try and create presentable models with it. I was really unprepared for how lovely Zbrush is to model with. Simply put it is the best 3d modeling software I have ever used. I mean you see zbrush models on CG sites and think it must take forever, or deadly amounts of skill and time to achieve sculpts like that. While knowing other 3d software helped a lot in learning Zbrush, the program really does make you feel like you are actually physically sculpting clay. So anyone with real world scuplting experience will find it pretty wonderful. If only you could animate in Zbrush, then I would dump 3ds max in a proverbial heart beat.

Anyway, I finally realized this character design I've been trying to develop for ages. As stated above her name is Eniola, and she is a somewhat mischevious girl, who is in love with everything Bruce Lee. She has hand tailored a customized "Game of Death" banana yellow jumpsuit and a pair of lady Bruce Lee tiger shoes. Her physical attruibutes are modelled loosely on my sister who has a mole on her nose as well, and mother (both have scars on their chins). Like her idol she considers herself a citizen of the world and has great philosophical aspirations. Stay tuned for a high resolution, color post of Eniola.

3d Gallery

Diffuse Map and Normal Map (2048x 2048)

Funlola textured (Photoshop, Zbrush, 3ds Max)


Funlola (Zbrush, 3ds Max)

Diffuse and Normal Map (2048x2048)

Jupiter Jonah textured (Photoshop, Zbrush, 3ds Max)

Jupiter Jonah, Wireframes (3ds Max)

Jupiter Jonah (3ds Max, Zbrush)

Mallam Tijani (3ds Max, Zbrush)

Hassan (Zbrush, 3ds Max)

Halima (Zbrush, 3ds Max)

Eniola shoes (3ds Max, Zbrush)

Eniola (3ds Max, Zbrush)
Eniola close-up (3ds Max, Zbrush)

Old time Fiat 500 and Steam train (3ds Max)

Orisha (3ds Max, Photoshop)

Artisan (3ds Max)

Egungun Concept

This is a small project I'm working on at the moment. This is an Egungun, a messenger of the Yoruba god of death, Iku. I will be using Zbrush to make a digital sculpt of the character over the next couple of weeks. He's supposed to be a character in the upcoming animation I'm slowly working on with my brother. I posted a concept image for the project a while ago here. If you know my brother, Shobo, please poke and prod him about completing the script. Oh and here is the original sketch of the character I did last year.

Drawings

Self Portraits (Pen and Nib)

Untitled (Charcoal, Ink and Photoshop)

Untitled (Charcoal)

Untitled (Charcoal)

Untitled (Charcoal)

Opolo Baba (Graphite)

Baba Itaniro (Graphite)

Fere Baale (Graphite)

Iya Korin (Graphite)

Madame Koin Koin (Graphite)

Iwa gallery: Production Stills

Iwa gallery: Pre Production

Iwa

Iwa from Kenneth Coker on Vimeo.

It is finally finished. It took roughly four months to create using 3ds Max, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Logic Pro. It was written, directed, and animated by myself, original score and sound design by Michael Peery and Brian Truesby. Click here or on the image to watch in higher res. Enjoy.

Resume

Please click on the image to view.

A 1 minute trailer for Iwa

Its without sound at the moment as I'm still working on that, but next week the whole 9 minute short will be completed. Comments are very welcome.

Illustrations

Hypnosis (Graphite sketch, Photoshop) October 2009

Silent Retreat (Graphite sketch, Photoshop) October 2009

Africa Benson , t-shirt illustration (Photoshop) September 2009

Cosmicomcs, student work (Photoshop) 2009
Cuban Stamps, student work (Photoshop) 2009

Peabody poster (Charcoal, Ink, and Photoshop) 2009

Lag Bus (Ink and Photoshop) 2008

Oni Ise Owo (Ink and Photoshop) 2007

Space Race (Photoshop) 2009

Delta Pipeline Timeline 1, 3, 5 (Graphite and Photoshop) 2009

Costus Spectabilis (Acrylic, Ink, and Photoshop) 2008

Oshodi March (Graphite, Ink and Photoshop) 2008

Untitled (Photoshop) 2008

Pied Piper of Benin (Graphite, Ink and Photoshop) 2008

Baobab (Graphite, Ink and Photoshop) 2008

Eyo (Charcoal and Photoshop) 2008

Test Renders for the Orisha

Here's a couple of test renders of an Orisha who features as a sort of creator figure in my story.