Edward Lobo

Edward Lobo, commonly known by his alias hueman.ntr is an African futuristic 3D artist, architect, and Sci-fi filmmaker who makes alternative African environments in Blender.

Q Please introduce yourself and provide an overview of what you do?

My name is Edward Lobo, my art name is Hueman ntr, human with an hue in the front, which represents all humans coming from different colours and hues, and nature spelt ntr which is the representation of the Egyptian Deities. I felt a connection between human and nature. I am a 3D artist and I make Afro futuristic Sci-fi sceneries which explore alternative timelines and discuss African stories from the perspective of different types of people.

Q What role will you be playing in this year’s festival?

I will be interacting in the digital animation spaces, but my art also falls under digital art because I also tap into photography as well. At one of the talks I will be touching on the work I do in 3D, and my experience with using the NFT space, because it’s now a new space for digital arts, one that I’ve been trying my luck in since the beginning of 2020. I’ve recently been relatively successful so I will also be discussing affairs as an NFT Artist.

Q Drawing from this year’s theme of “build coz you have to”, how are you exploring the notion of building using the tools that you use to create 3D animation and photography, how do you build your work?

There is a technical and a philosophical answer to this question. On the technical side, I will be discussing the process of my workflow and the software I use, which is what I use to get better. I have only been doing this for two years and I have noticed my improvement, so it’s only important that I share what I know.

The philosophical approach looks at instances where we deal with African sci-fi art, you are not just dealing with creating these magnificent images, you are also helping people rethink their history. For example my upcoming collection is about rare objects that are, basically, a collection of 3D objects of artefacts that have been sent back from colonial Europe, so from Belgium and Britain, so I’ve recreated those objects and they’ll be sold as NFT’s. This increases the value of the actual artefacts and will help people with rethinking what could have been the purpose of these artefacts, were they just aesthetics or were they actually useful in their everyday life? People will actually find out that most of the things that we call art today were actually tools, and that’s gonna help people rethink the meaning of a tool.

Q Tech and innovation is often perceived as something that is hard to understand and participate in. How is your work challenging this perception?

It’s about understanding what the meaning of technology is. There has been this whitewashed definition of technology that just means screen and I think it should be based more on usage. I was fortunate enough to be in a solution finding, think tank group that we worked for a week with Nyambura M. Waruingi, and within that bubble we were discussing solutions of overcoming the barrier of Africans within the NFT space because a lot of us don’t have access to electricity and good WiFi, and have many socio-political factors working against us that keep us away from being up to date with the NFT space. One of the solutions that came up was from a lady working in the rural areas in Kenya and were giving people access to the electrical grid, and selling it to them through an app on their phone. They could buy electricity online which is a great implementation of technology, which is all about usage, just like how mankind went from looking at the stars to being in the stars. I think if we were to look at technology and WiFi access the same way, within 10 years it won’t be a barrier as it is today.

Q Mobility and access to the internet can tend to be a barrier to innovation. In your work how do you consider the accessibility of what you are producing?

I’ve been obsessed with VR experiences and one of the biggest parts of these things is having the VR goggles and not everyone can afford these. So there is a huge number of people who aren’t seeing the content. So one of the things I did with my collaborations for 2022 I worked with Ethel Tawe, she’s a Cameroonian curator who does art to photography, and she and I had the opportunity to work together on an exhibition in Nigeria with A White Space Lagos and I was the only 3D artist within the exhibition. She had the idea of people being able to experience the space within VR because it was during Covid-19 and they wouldn’t get access to the opportunity, and at the time I was learning how to use Google Tours and that’s what we used for the exhibition and people were able to view the gallery on their phones without goggles

“My goal is to use this opportunity to learn from other artists and get involved in their spaces."

and have the sense of being in the space and navigating left and right. It was about pushing the boundary further than the websites with your artworks shown on it as it gives a more immersive feel. Technology requires investment, instead of people creating dependency on more gadgets, we should look at the phone as a complete object and make everything work on a good phone.

Q How feasible have you found your new career in 3D filmmaking to be?

I used to be an architect and in the beginning everyone was saying I should just be an architect and earn a salary that can help you survive and do many things and having studied for 4 years I wanted my money’s worth, but that takes a pretty long time. So when I moved to Congo I was struggling with the question of becoming an architect again then I heard of the artist Beeple Crap who sold the NFT for $67 million. So I believed I can make millions from good 3D art and I decided to learn what goes into 3D art and it turned out that to make a scene it would take me a long time. I was met by the changes of my mother telling me to get a job since I hold a degree but I told her I really wanted to become an artist. The one thing that really changed my life was the exhibition with A White Space Lagos, it was my first exhibition where my work was physically printed and after the exhibition launched there were two billboards in London that had myself and Ethel Tawe’s name and the artworks we created where only two of them were sold. The support I received from my mother has been incredible because she saw that there was a future for me in this. Marketing my NFT’s on Twitter spaces was also a great idea because the sooner I started promoting my work I started getting into conversations with interested buyers and I started communicating the value of my work.

Q How do you intend to power up your specific industry with the work you do, and how do you envision using the Fak’ugesi platform to create conversations, transfer skills and network?

I aim to start my own Patreon channel where people could get access to African 3D assets because I have noticed that in terms of the industry, a lot of 3D artists and 3D generalists usually do Western arts and not with the intentionality to do Western but just that the objects within the images are Western suggestive and it’s because they make art with what’s available to them. When I got into the 3D space I started with making Western objects because I used to be an architect before, so I also got into the Greek statues with the pool on the side, but after a while I moved to Kinshasa in 2020 from South Africa and I had a real culture shock when I saw that Congo wasn’t progressing. And I thought about how my 3D art was not my reality and I started making art that was more about where I am at.

3D art is about efficiency and because there weren’t many assets I needed online I had to create my own. So I started designing my own African masks, drums, curtains, baskets etc all using pictures from Pinterest that I would remodel in Blender and I would use them to create my scenes. So I would like to have tutorials and walk people through how I make my scenes and make the asset and go through my workflow so a lot more people can jump over the learning curve I had to go through so they can make quickly get to making the art so that the art can be pushed to having more creators. So I will be starting this with my talk as I will be giving tips on good accounts to follow and YouTube channels to learn from.

My goal is to use this opportunity to learn from other artists and get involved in their spaces. I’ll also give them my own experience on how they can promote their work and hopefully by the end of the year I would have a good community of people.