Mahjuti

Front cover complete. The Graphic Novel is uploading to Kindle...

Inspiration.

Tsuchiya Koitsu (Japanese, 1870 - 1949)

"Manazuru Harbor at Night", 1936.

Whipjack Thraw the Cacodaemon.

*sound on

Countless ages ago a disgruntled Cacodaemon retreated from the world to seek refuge deep in his underground lair. And there he would have remained, at peace, far from the squabbling masses of humans who had crowded him out, but for the appearance of a certain Mahjee who was looking to make a name for himself.

This Mahjee worked a Mahjuti Meta-Glyph on Whipjack that bound him within a space-time bubble. In other words, he doomed the Daemon to repeat the same 30 seconds or so of his life over and over, endlessly into eternity. Without respite.

The trap took Whipjack completely by surprise. He’d just finished a poetic warning to the Mahjee that Cacodaemons are immortal and that no Mahjuti tricks could harm him, when a series of glowing Glyphs appeared before his eyes. The ancient daemon, who long ago had proved he was invincible, found himself cocooned in a veil of shimmering sky-blue light. And that was that. He was trapped.

Inspiration.

Jean Baptiste

Veil of the Gods is a huge project and I'm so grateful to be able to create it. Here's a new typeface I created for the Graphic Novel and a new depiction of one of the lead characters. Jatta Eye the Poet.

So, for some months now I've been keeping my work under wraps while I’ve been minting NFTs or Nifties, as I prefer to call them. Thanks to the NFT explosion I've been called to explore some exciting new mediums.

If you don't know what a Nifty is, don't worry I'll post a full explanation of this concept later. Let's just say for now that they fit perfectly with the story of Veil of the Gods.

My latest obsession ties in beautifully with NFTs. It is Mocap, or motion capture technology. It's quite a simple process really if you have an iPhone with a true depth camera. Android and the others just can't do this sort of work.

First, I sculpt a character in a 3D modelling programme. Then I take a reference video of my own face as I speak the character's lines. I drop the animation files over the top of the 3D sculpture, render frame by frame, then tidy up the files in photoshop.

After that my partner adds the vocals we've recorded via Final Cut Pro, while I start preparing the next animation. I suppose the tricky bit is digital sculpting, lighting and camera work within the 3D environment. That's taken me years to learn.

Anyway, here's one of the sketches for a character. Stay tuned. He'll be speaking in the next few days. And you might be surprised at how life-like he looks when animated.

Oh, and he’s available now as a rare NFT collectible on Hic Et Nunc https://hicetnunc.art/objkt/568738

Inspiration.