Original Azim Akberali art for sale

by thatrogersguy

 

Back in 2004 (or possibly 2005) while trawling the internet to find an artist I discovered Azim Akberali on Comic Foundry.   He ended up being the artist on my first ever published work “Eye of the Storm” which appeared in Mysterious Visions After Hours anthology from Dimestore Productions and since then we’ve worked together a number of times (I’ve described him before as the Chow Yun Fat to my John Woo) .  He designed the logo for Orang Utan Comics when I set that up and went on to be a mainstay of OUC providing pencilled sequential art and painted covers and pin ups.  But all along I longed to put something together with him with fully painted pages and the first time we managed to do that was Seniors which appeared in part in Eleventh Hour Vol.1 and in full in my first graphic novel The Interactives (both from Markosia).  Check out his extensive catalogue of work on Graphicly .

Azim has been a huge inspiration for me over the years, every time I complain I don’t have enough time to get scripts done or I feel despondent or  demotivated I think about him.  In Tanzania they have power rationing meaning that much of his work, including all his hand painted covers and pages, has been done by candlelight putting an enormous strain on his eyes.  He’s also had some health problems which means he has struggled to keep pace with sequential projects, with the Barack Obama book for Bluewater Productions (which I had a cameo in) being his only fully painted full length sequential book.    Sadly this has meant some of the larger scale projects we had planned never quite made it, including a sci-fi mini series we’d done a lot of work on together.  There is a longer version of Seniors that we’d like to revisit one of these days, almost a director’s cut with a longer flashback sequence in the middle and more playing around in that particular superhero universe.   He has to take the lion’s share of the credit for Seniors as it was all written Marvel style giving him the space needed to really make the most of his painted style.

He’s been a brilliant, inspirational and humble collaborator and an amazing friend.  Recently he trusted me with looking after quite a bit of his original art so that I can sell it on his behalf ( the plan is to set up an e-commerce site in the future).  Until that’s up and running you can purchase via me (100% of what you pay will go to Azim however).  I won’t be able to bring them all with me to Bristol and Kapow! in the coming weeks, but if you are interested in receiving the full list of what’s available please get in touch  – peter@peter-rogers.com and I’ll send it over.  If there’s a piece you’d like to buy I  can then bring it with me to collect in person or work out postage and packing costs to send it to you. We have smaller pieces for £20 and larger ones for £40, all fully painted and breathtakingly good.  Here are just a few of my favourites.