Ar. Jethro Koi Lik Wai, is an architect by profession, an artist by heart and a digital entrepreneur by passion. He is one of the directors of Verge Architect Sdn Bhd, that believes in Defying the Limits of design and does not shy away from challenges and the impossible. His passion for design drove the direction of his life’s ambitions. His designs and renderings of architecture and artwork, are so detailed and real that would blow you away and make you wonder – How-long-does-it-take-to-be-as-good-as-Koi?
This article features Jethro Koi’s journey from a start-up and pursuing his passion for futuristic design in another universe known as Neo Terra. A world he created to let his creativity run wild, to divert his aflention, his meditation spot to prevent burn-out from the real world. Neo Terra is an open-ended design collective guided by a grand storyline that features a terraformed earth, created by Ar. Jethro Koi and the universe expanded in detail together with his team of friends.
THE JOURNEY
Ar. Jethro Koi designs cityscapes in both the real and virtual worlds. Building the virtual world means a refreshing liberation from the constraints of structure, cost, materials, time, and clients that tend to plague real buildings; for Jethro, his virtual world, Neo Terra, is catharsis for his burnout as a practicing architect.
His childhood was filled with drawings of Transformers and Gundam fictional robots. Jethro remembers drawing whenever his teachers were teaching in class. By the time he applied to architecture schools, he was armed with a portfolio of Transformers and Gun- dam “mecha” that he designed himself.
His demanding career did litlle to derail his hobby. Mecha continued to influence his art and architectural style throughout the years. “Even now, my clients are telling me that my designs look like Gundam,” he admitted, chuck- ling. In 2012, Jethro expanded his grand plans to develop his mecha-themed world, Neo Terra.
Neo Terra glued together his years of designing individual mechs, 3D modelling and rendering skills, and his architecture acumen to create a World with its own transportation systems, societies, ecosystems, civilisations, countries and currency among others. Such a large project required a lot of time and effort. It all started with Jethro,bouncing ideas of a futuristic world with his childhood friend, Nathan. Nathan is a digital marketer and hobbyist writer who brings his love for games and comics, adding a fun and unique perspective.The grand story was outlined and the idea of Neo Terra was pitched toanother childhood friend – Charles Then, a chemical engineer by profession and hobbyist writer.
By 2013, Neo Terra took on a life of its own – coalescing into an intricate collection of lore stemming from the events of “Cataclysm” to the rise of human civilizations from the very brink of extinction to face Neo Terra’s unprecedented threats – mechanized monsters known as “Terracons”.
Over the next few years, Charles expanded upon the concept of Neo Terra. There are now three unpublished novels and four unpublished novellas set in Neo Terra, supported by side stories, character and narrative guides!
Collaborating with others with different styles and skill sets was a learning experience for everyone involved, despite being familiar with teamworkin the construction industry. Does the story or the artwork come first? How could they be sure that they were communicating the right messages to each other when producing content? In a world that is entirely virtual, visuals were just as important as the storyline. Thus a race for time began in the production of artworks to match the speed of writing. Fortunately, at the time of publication, AI has now sufficiently matured to have proven effective use in the production of concept artworks.
Still, their dedication to Neo Terra did not mean that they were not open to other opportunities. When Pokemon Go first launched in 2016, Jethro began to design mechanised versions of the starter Pokemon as a proof of concept towards mechanized monsters, he then shared them with enthusiasts alike via Frame War’s social media pages. These mecha inspired versions of artwork received support and applause from collectors and catapulted Frame War’s social media pages to 50,000 likes.
The artworks became so popular that Jethro and his team decided to explore further and invested in 3D printing. At the same time, developing their series as resin collectibles.
The design and manufacturing process was fulfilling yet challenging on many fronts. Jethro’s original plan to contract a local 3D artist for the initialdrawing was scrapped when he realised no two-dimensional drawings can clearly convey his vision. He ended up modelling his first prototype – Mecha Venusaur – entirely in SketchUp. Unfortunately, SketchUp was not suitablefor this model printing, as the curved parts of the prototype ended up very segmented, so they spent another half a year sourcing for international digital sculptors to smoothen the 3D model
using other software. Then there were issues with the 3D prototypes printed and moulded from China. “The first prototype model was shipped to us with off colours and broken,” Jethro said. “We were really sad about that, and to make matters worse, we had two invited statue collectors present during the unboxing in my office at 11 pm!”
He had no choice but to source for hidden local paint artists and resin model repair specialist, trades which are totally unfamiliar to his profession. All these needed to be resolved while adhering to a shipping deadline of the final mass products. Luckily, a long lost childhood friend, Jonathan Leong – a GUNPLA and Transformer enthusiast who had a studio for modification and airbrushing works, came highly recommended to save the day. With this, the completed prototype was then sent back to China to be used as a reference for mass production. The final products were completed in another 2 months and shipped to collectors worldwide. After Mecha Venusaur, the team at Frame Wars went on to produce Mecha Blastoise and it is during this 2nd production that they met Chan Yen Yee, a local 3D digital sculptor highly skilled in character design. With him, the entire team is complete and the design and prototyping process can now be fully done in Malaysia. Next will be Mecha Charizard.
The proliferation of the Internet and online shopping has greatly benefit- ted Jethro and his team, as they can gain global exposure for Neo Terra and the Frame Wars.
With his sights now back on Neo Terra, Jethro has plans to capitalise on the current trend of short-form videos, such as Instastory, Reels, Tiktok, and Youtube Shorts to introduce Neo Terra to a wider, younger audience who are accustomed to swiping and watching shorter clips.
After all that has transpired, it was quite ironic that a school teacher who once caught Jethro sketching in class during lessons, reprimanded him saying- drawing (art) has no future. “Well, now I am living my dreams!” he said wryly, “so I’d say anything is possible if you put your heart and mind into it.”
