If you don’t know the name Nikolas A. Draper-Ivey I bet you’ve seen his work and might have it as a part of your collection as he did the cover image for the Marvel’s Black Panther film soundtrack. Or you might have seen his art online as cosplayers have taken on the task of recreating his unique takes on Final Fantasy characters. Or maybe you’ve seen him in cosplay as Spider-man, Miles Morales.
- Sephiroth cosplay by @jihatsu
- Tifa cosplay by Aziah Isaac @sun_z and @mj8productions
Draper-Ivey has been on the come up and this year has been huge from the cover of one of the biggest film soundtracks of the year to working on Xogenasys, a series from Noir Caesar. To those on the outside it would seen like this would be amazing but his Instagram tells a different story. Hashtags abound tell of apprehension and ill will. I caught up with Draper-Ivey at Anime NYC to chat with him about the seedy undercurrent of his current work struggles.
KaosBlac: So tell me about your book. I’ve been following along with your social media and things seem…a little of a mess.
Nikolas Draper-Ivey: It’s like…it’s been quite an experience for sure. A learning experience. The book itself,(Xogenasys), is coming out at the end of the year, the first volume of it. The art book is out now. I know there is gonna be anime coming out soon. I think it starts production next year. I can’t really talk too much about it but I know it got picked up by some major that wanted to be involved with it.
KB: So you have a lot of stuff going on, the art book, you have a figure, of the main character, but there still seems to be a disconnect with you and whats being done with the book.
NDI: Yeeaaaaah. Yeah, um, right now there is a lot of rushing and I didn’t really have much input on how the book should be laid out and displayed. So when it comes time to when the book is finally done and everything is said and done everything is finished I can iron out those creases. Its really frustrating because I have a set standard for how I want the books to be and when it’s not that way I become extremely irritable like Mikhail, pointing to Mikhail Sebastian (Mikhail Sebastian does the art on one of Noir Caesar’s other books Sorcerority), can tell you I’m not a happy person when shit is not done the right way. So hopefully we don’t run into those problems on my way out after I have finished the first book. I think there will be another book after this one where there will be another art book where it will have all the illustration stuff i have done in there. So God willing that will go through the way it should. The project itself is shaping up nicely. In the beginning it was kind of a slow pace and once it starts to get where it should be in terms of action and brutality and all that it starts to take shape, but we’ll see man we’ll see what happens.
KB: So earlier in the year you had a big get you did the cover of the Black Panther soundtrack what else is going on in your artist life besides this book and the cover?
NDA: Whats next? Oh shit well… I can’t really…I know I want to work on one of my personal stories now after that I don’t know what I’ll be doing I can’t really say there are some people that want to work with me on different projects. I’m not sure if I’ll work with them or if I’ll continue to work on Dreamvesper. I know I’ll continue to work on my own personal stuff. In terms of professional gigs I don’t know what I’m gonna do with that yet, I’m not gonna say rather.
Draper-Ivey has a kind of knowing glint in his eye as he says this.
KB: So anything you want to share with the world at large beside what you put out on your Instagram,
NDI: Life is hard. (he laughs) On a real note I would say if you are gonna get into this industry don’t try t0 get into it as a fan and try to approach it as a fan because you would be immediately out classed and you will come a ground people who really know heir shit and it will embarrasses you if you don’t come correct. I would say keep that fire, keep that passion but know that it’s a lot of hard work and it’s not gonna be as smooth as you think its gonna be it’s not gonna be fun all the time there are gonna be days where you wanna quit. There are days where you wanna throw the towel in. There will be days you are gonna hate your co-workers, your gonna hate yourself. There are gonna be days where you are gonna not want to keep going, but if you can just hold on to that and keep working be persistent things will pan out but you gotta really have faith and hold on to it. It wont always be easy you gonna cuss some mother fuckers out but if you just hold tight things will pan out.
Currently Draper-Ivey has a few pointed post with art of No More Heores character Travis Touchdown. You can follow Nikolas A. Draper-Avey on Intagram and follow his Tumblr.
Kaos Blac
Kaosblac@comicattack.com
Twitter: kaosblac
