Wanderlust

Josh DeVela

See it On Campus: Level 1

WANDERLUST – “The Worlds Within my Mind”

Welcome to Wanderlust, a collection of illustration and narrative projects that focus on world building, characters, and concept art, all revolving around worlds of fantasy, fiction, and imagination<. To start, this series of work is titled “Vividly”. All digital illustrations printed on a Matte print to explore themes of both cyberpunk and neo noir.

“VIVIDLY”

“TO BURN EVEN BRIGHTER”

18” X 24” Matte Print

“THE BEAUTIFUL ROSE BLOSSOMS”

16” X 20” Matte Print

“MY ROAR ECHOES LOUDER”

12” X 16” Matte Print

“VIVIDLY”

Final Installation

The “Vividly” series are all Illustrations, and concept art for a passion project/manga series of mine called…

WEAPON CITY

“WEAPON CITY”

Fate is often seen as an immovable force that guides our path in life.
However…

It is also believed that we are more than capable of disrupting such a concept through free will alone.

“Ad astra inclinant, sed non obligant”

Weapon City is a manga project that has been in conception since late 2020. It wasn’t until 2023 that a fully fledged story was written out with nearly 100 pages of illustrations. The manga was done for a VAST class, and towards the end the project it felt rushed and unfinished at some points. Overall I am happy with how it turned out being able to print out an entire book including a cover, but I felt that it needed more work. As of now I am working on this manga as a passion project, rewriting the story, and reworking my art style. Putting more time and thought into the story, world, and character designs.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST VOLUME!

or search for Weapon City (One Shot 2023) or d3city on MangaPlusCreators!

Synopsis

When a second moon mysteriously appears in the sky, strange creatures known as Vivids appeared all over the world. In order to fight and survive the Vivid’s destructive tendencies, humans developed super powered weapons, and thus, the legendary heroes they called Wielders were born!

Devastated over her mother’s death, Sora Bellarose sets out to find the Vivid responsible. When she meets Damian Delfuego, she finds that he too is looking for the same monster, but to avenge his late mentor. With the same goal in mind, she joins him at a Wielder Detective Agency. There she meets the powerful but also distrusting members of Weapon City, so to prove herself to them, she aids the squad in their current mission, to solve the case behind the mysterious monster troubling the city of Alto Reo — The Billion Beast!

“Weapon City Volume 1 Cover” 2023

Physical Printed Book (Front and Back)

This first volume consists of 4 chapters, and acts as the introduction for the world, and the main cast. Inspired by many manga series of the Shonen genre -such as One Piece, Spy X Family, and Kaiju No. 8– I focused on creating a story that focused on action, world building, and character dynamics. As of now, I’ve put a lot more time into researching real-life locations to use as inspiration for the world, and rewriting the story into a more action/mystery story.

Character Designs and Concepts

These are some character designs of the main cast that I recently worked on. To fit in with the theme of the manga -which was cyberpunk and neo noir- each character is fitted with techwear, and each wielding a specially built weapon of choice to fit with their personality, and fighting style.

Weapon City Character Concepts 2024

This is some concept art that I worked on for the manga, before the story was even written. Characters and some Concepts were established, but nothing was set in stone. There are some working ideas that I may want to back to eventually. These works were a way for me to establish character designs., and the art style.