Meet Jabari Weathers: Illustrator, Writer, Game Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jabari Weathers and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jabari, why did you pursue a creative career?
I wanted to tell stories and making my art always felt natural. I also grew up with video games and a lot of the experiences I was drawn to had its conceptual DNA in roleplaying games, so when I got to my professional career making art for tabletop RPGs and eventually writing for them at the same time felt like the natural way to share in that process. If I wanted to make my profession all about exchanging narratives and experiences with each other, I can’t think of a better, more organic medium to do so.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m always hesitant to talk about what makes my work different in specific terms, but I do try to make my work feel very personal and very emotionally present, and in recent years I think that I’m having more success in achieving that within compositional frameworks that are more easily digestible. I’m very comfortable with liminal spaces and ambiguity in the media I consume and create, and I’ve been chasing that with inconsistent success in a lot of my work because I think it provokes people to have to work a bit when they look at my work. I’m trying to make my art easier to digest, but I don’t ever want that to entirely go away as much as I want that demand of my audience to become more of a cerebral challenge rather than one of a visual nature. I was just readjusting my website (goblinprincete.com) and going through my main portfolio and my archive, and I can see the trend where that’s starting to become more successful, where the conversations I want to have around identity and existing feel more clearly stated to me than they did even five years ago.

This path wasn’t easy at all though. I’ve always had an immense amount of support that I’ve been and remain very grateful for. Some of it wasn’t in the right form for me and yet helped me grow even as it impeded my growth in other areas I knew I needed to see to, and others I still feel an immense debt to. Almost anyone who’s finding momentum in the society I exist in I think has some support somewhere, and its so hard to convey the gratitude for that when you’re in the middle of the grind and that grind is endless. I’m often very tired and worn, but I know it could be so much worse and yet I also know that some–a lot–of that wear and tear and even growth is out of trauma that I’m processing now, whether it’s through what I make or through therapy. I near constantly work and I’m afraid to lean on people too much thanks to some past experiences, and my recent work and efforts have been an education on how to let in help again. All of my professional work is intensely personal and I think, I hope that that’s visible.

I honestly feel scared *all* the time when I’m making, but I try to seep that fear into the work in order to get through it and to find that connection with my audience in whatever form they’re meeting my ideas. I want people to know that, When it comes to the kind of stories I wanna tell and share in, I’m drawn to fantasy in particular because it can look so cool and imaginative, but it also gives me a platform to grapple with my world and the things that feel really wrong with it in a more clear way through metaphors. A lot of people use the genre for escapism–and assume I do the same, but I rarely lean on it in that relieving a way. Fantasy is often cathartic for me to partake in my creative process, but it’s because I’m exploring and unknotting a host of emotional realities I see in the world, and trying to invite others to do the same.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Gee…I didn’t go out much before the pandemic and now I really don’t have an awesome answer to this. Uhh, there’s a cool Ramen shop in downtown Baltimore that I thought was pretty plum, and I live a block away from my go-to bar in the city (Brewer’s Art). I’ve wanted to go to more theatre and more shows, so in an alternate timeline I’d probably be hitting up the Metro Gallery and Ottobar more often, but I am sort of a mix of a homebody and wanderer under normal circumstances. Crowded places, even when I’m enjoying them, confound my senses–and my bar of what’s ‘crowded’ is a pretty low threshold to clear…

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Honestly there are so many people who deserve that recognition in my life, especially in recent years. I’ll highlight xx: the brilliant Misha Bushyager is who I see as my first mentor in the tabletop RPG space, and she’s an incredible writer in her own right. Ajit George and Whitney Beltran have also been incredible friends and supports to my growth as a writer and game designer even in the difficult times of 2020, and Strix(Whitney)’s work with Sarah Richardson and Marissa Kelly on ‘Bluebeard’s Bride’ continues to be one of my gold standard games and something that’s pushed me to search for catharsis in my own game design, as well as reinforced the value of tackling difficult experiences and emotions in my artwork. There are *many* more folks who I really cherish, and a good deal of them I’ve met in the last few years, but I also think it speaks to the Scifi/Fantasy art/publishing scene (particularly the imaginative realism realm), and indie/story game communities I’ve dove into in the past 6 years that it’s honestly intimidating to try to narrow how many people have had a palpable impact on me in a positive sense.

Website: goblinprincete.com

Instagram: jmwillustration

Twitter: goblinprincete

Image Credits
Photo c. Human Being Productions