BOB Wakelin: A lasting legacy
Friends pay tribute to legendary Ocean Software artist, Bob Wakelin
Retro Gamer is sad to report that the acclaimed Ocean Software artist, Bob Wakelin, has passed away. Robert ‘Bob’ Wakelin discovered his love of drawing from an early age and was eventually able to make a career out of it. Suffering from asthma as a child, Bob would typically spend a lot of his time at home ill and would spend that time drawing, whilst reading various comics and books. As his health improved, his love of drawing remained and it became his craft.
After studying art for three years,
Bob got his first job designing posters (along with the odd album sleeve) for a company called Modular. He also had a short career with post-punk/new wave band, Modern Eon, performing vocals, percussion and strings, as well as creating album sleeves for the band and other artists. Heavily inspired by the work of DC and Marvel comics, he would not only emulate their art in his later work, but would even start creating covers, most notably for Spider-man and Return Of The Jedi and The Super Heroes Monthly. For many gamers, however, Bob Wakelin is best known for the stunning covers he created for nearly 100 Ocean Software games.
Bob began his 11-year-old relationship with Ocean Software in 1983 when it was still known as Spectrum games. Early art like Gilligan’s Gold, Comic Bakery and Chinese Juggler ensured that Ocean’s games stood apart from their peers and we’d imagine a lot of those earlier releases were purchased on the strength of Bob’s art alone. Bob had a way of injecting action into his work that made them look exciting to play. Sometimes the game was a turkey, but at least you had that art to enjoy.
“When you think of Ocean titles, the first thing that springs to mind is the box art,” reveals ex-ocean developer, Paul Hughes. “The illustration on the front of the box or the A4 adverts in the magazines painted a picture in your mind’s eye of what the game was going to be. Certainly, in Ocean’s formative years, those cover illustrations could be significantly better than the product within. All of this was down to one man with a unique talent – Bob Wakelin. For me, Bob’s artwork defined Ocean’s product output; the quality of the artwork imbued a professionalism upon any title that it adorned. His work stood out on the crowded shelves, like a great piece of album artwork.”
Mark Jones, who worked as a graphic artist at Ocean is in full agreement.