Knitting The Triplets Of Digital Arts

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to draw contents I see in Marvel comic books and popular animation characters. Those days, I was a child who was known for drawing with my pencil on papers. After my University education, I worked in a bank for a few years. Truly, I was earning quite well but I never enjoyed it. My passion for arts was very strong that I would still create time at night to create arts despite my tight schedule in my banking job. In time, I was so tired and mentally drained that it was obvious banking was not meant for me. I had to resign and focus on my passion – Illustration, digital arts and animation.

• 

Honestly, I would have preferred to be just an illustrator. But to be a successful full-time digital artist in Nigeria, you need more than just one skill. Combining all the three skills together is not a big deal for me because they all complement each other because digital arts and animation requires illustration. They all require artistic skills. In my quest to get better and pay my bills, I had to learn animation.

• 

One day, I got an offer from a company in the United States, Fancy Phone Case. I was hired to make arts for the company for sales. That offer transformed my life. It was a breakthrough that built and motivated my passion.

• 

As an illustrator, I have worked on many children’s books and I still partner with some publishing firms. I am currently working on some books that are yet to published – Captain Excellence, Dragons Can Sing, Bimpe’s Diary (Season 2). My team and I upload comic book story on Webtoons.

• 

On keeping up with the trend, I do try out new skills and they end up looking better than my regular style. I watch a whole lot of tutorials. Thanks to YouTube and some content creators like Mohammed Agbadi, Patrick Brown, Artgerm Lau and many others. It’s soothing to learn new techniques when you are already good with the basic knowledge. Just like the popular saying – Any mistake in arts is design.

• 

One of the major challenges I had when I wanted to delve into arts was the fact that there was little or no art studios (art-driven enterprise in Nigeria). With that, my plan is to build a studio that can accommodate youths that have passion for arts.

• 

There are a lot of people in other sectors in Nigeria who are quite good in arts but because there are no good avenues to exhibit it, they lose their talents to something that doesn’t give fulfilment.

• 

There are about nine other artists in my team and we all learn from each other. The rule in this game is consistency and willingness to continue learning.