The Dredagle Tattoo

What do you see first?


Judge Dredd or an Eagle?

Last year, Mike from the 2000ad forum asked for someone to design him a Judge Dredd Eagle tattoo... I had a go at designing something for him and this was one he chose from several options I showed him:


He tweaked it a little from the originals:


All was well until recently. Before taking the plunge and permanently marking himself, he asked for some last minute opinions... a wise decision as it turns out!
As soon as the word Nazi was mention, I did a quick google image search for "Nazi Eagle" and was thoroughly shocked to discover that I had inadvertently designed something that was pretty close to one of their emblems... I immediately offered to design something else for Mike.


I began by sketching ideas out and very quickly hit on the Eagle-head & wings forming the visor section of Dredd's helmet (bottom right above). It was serendipity I reckon, to have created Dredd's visage and an Eagle in one emblem, I was pretty chuffed.
Before showing anything to Mike, I worked in photoshop and created the top left one below.

Mike asked for some alternatives, possibly with Dredd's badge or with the Eagle's legs (top middle and top right) but I didn't like that it made Dredd look like Chad and a bit beard-y respectively).



After this, Mike decided that he like to see some alternatives based upon my original again, but trying to work more of the Eagle's chest into the design. I showed Mike a few more variations than I've shown in the middle row above. There was a bit more discussion before I presented the final two in the bottom row. He selected the one at the top of the posting and we're gathering opinions now before Mike does actually go ahead and get himself branded!

The Red Dragon

Page 33 of Fractal Friction is up.


It features a massive Red Dragon... you know what to do!

Judge Dredd Movie Poster

A long time between posts... and I really can't remember what has kept me away so long! This post is my 300th, by the way!


This month's art competition on the 2000ad forum is to design a poster for the upcoming Dredd movie. I'm supposed to be working on a multitude of other things, and so this concept that I had been noodling with probably won't get finished more than this.

Art Swap: Angry Dredd

Here's another of those art swaps, this time for Conor Boyle, who wanted "a suitably annoyed Dredd".


In return, he's done a fabulous version of Halo Jones - my all time favourite female 2000ad character!


If anyone out there would like a sketch similar to those I've done for my Fractal Friction buddies, you only need ask. I'll do A4 sketches of this kind for the bargain hunt price of £15*. Times are tight, paying jobs are scarce and the concept of an arts grant is laughable, so consider it a form of sponsorship, you could even commission me for something a bit bigger...

* inc p&p for UK, leave a comment or send me an e-mail with your request.

PS. I've had some lovely comments recently - I don't tend to comment on my own posts or other people's comments, but I do appreciate them, so I would just like to thank all those who've been here recently and left such encouraging remarks. You're all superstars, cheers!

Art Swap: Aimee Nixon

This one was done for Chris Askham, who simply asked for a female 2000AD character... Who to choose? Halo Jones, DeMarco, Venus Bluegenes, Niamh? A plethora of sexy maidens were before me to choose from... so who did I choose? Yep, the hard nut resident of the lowlife and wally squad Judge, Aimee Nixon, who you'd want to be careful to ever describe as sexy, but is still one of my favourite female characters of recent years.


In return, Chris did this top notch piece of Judge Anderson for me.

Sketchup Lawmaster

I've known about Google sketchup for a while and I've done nothing about learning how to use it, despite having heard pretty good things... that changed last week when I saw an amazing job that Richard Smith did using it to model a spaceship called the Terrapin (see Richard's website for more of his illustration work). The Terrapin is for a strip he is working on for a forthcoming issue of FutureQuake and looks awesome and I was inspired to learn more!


After asking Richard whether he thought it was worth learning how to use Sketchup, (a resounding yes), I decided I would spend a bit of time trying to get to grips with it. There are some limitations but I managed to build Judge Dredd's Lawmaster (his bike) and I'm not unhappy with the results... I will build a few other things and hopefully it will help greatly with that Dredd strip I'm doing for Zarjaz with Lee Robson.


I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed with sketchup and for a FREE and EASY 3D package I can see no downside, especially when you can export animations that you can use to show others around the models you have built. So, can I recommend it? On Monday I had no idea how to create things in 3D that I could then use to plan scenes and things... and now I have a new and powerful tool in my skill set! So, I can strongly recommend it, well worth the time spent I think!

Art Swap: Bull's eye Belle

The art swap continues, this one is simply a WWII inspired 'something'. I realise now that Bullseye Bombshell would have been a better name - oh well!


Done for Matt Soffe in return for this deliciously vampish Lulu Romanov. Lulu is the sister of the roguish Nikolai Dante, swashbuckling hero of the 2000ad epic tale of the same name.

Art Swap: The Spider

My Fractal Friction chums are doing an Art Swap, simply put, each has asked the others for a sketch and in return, you guessed it, they get a sketch... see? Art Swap, simple innit?

First up for me is James Corcoran who asked for The Spider... I'll be honest, I only vaguely knew this character existed and so, I'm not 100% sure I've done him justice.
To me this looks like the Count from Sesame Street and there are a couple of obvious things wrong with it as well, but I set myself the task of doing each sketch within a quarter of an hour, I've done them all now and none took more than about 30-40 minutes. I'm pretty happy with them as sketches and I'll post them up as I receive each of my requests.


In return for The Spider, James has already done me this lovely rendition of Jenny Simmons from Caballistics, Inc. Caballistics, Inc. is a 2000ad strip, a fabulously dark paranormal and supernatural story written by Gordon Rennie and drawn by Dom Reardon... if you haven't read it, I can thoroughly recommend it as a sort of UK version of the Hellboy spin-off BPRD.

Fractal Friction Page 26

It was my turn again on Fractal Friction this week. I actually finished the inks for this last thursday and colours on friday, but for obvious reasons couldn't share it until now... well, I sneaked that one edited panel out.


I knew this page was taking place in another dimension, so I thought I'd try a slightly different inking style... and as we were awakening the once and future King, I thought it needed some serious magic mood too. It was a bit of an experiment in using more black areas as well.
The colour palette I chose, again, was supposed to be a bit moody and magical, I was also trying to get a bit of a hint of the colour palette that John Higgins and Sally Hurst have been using in 2000ad... you can judge whether I achieved that here.

It was a really cool page to be doing, the major problem was getting Arthur to look regal and identifiable - 'cos I knew he would be nekkid, and without his crown. The concept for this page was also a real collabrative effort and took place across the e-mail with all of my Fractal Friction cohorts chipping in ideas for how we could 'grow' our new King Arthur!

Comic Sans: a Rebuke.

My fabulous, multi-talented friend and lettering guru Jim Campbell posted a link on the 2000ad forum to an imagined monologue by the font Comic Sans... A fun piece of creative writing, in defense of the much criticised font. It struck a chord with me though and so I found myself constructing a rebuke on behalf of Dom Casual...

So, In answer to the imagined monologue of Comic Sans by Mike Lacher via Timothy McSweeney's website.

YEAH, YOU'RE COMIC SANS, WELL, I'M DOM CASUAL AND I'M NOT HAPPY.

Guess what, Comic Sans, turns out you are as stupid as you look. You can't compare your self to the likes of Univers... if I was a screwdriver, I wouldn't compare myself to a chisel would I? You need to frame your argument in context. You are at best merely an informal font.
You are not the straight talking man on the street of the font world. You are not a superhero rock star fighting the good fight for fun typography either.

But you're damn right, I don't like seeing you everywhere. You think everyone likes you but you're wrong. They're just using you because you're easy, available and free and that's rarely a good set of characteristics. It's not some elitist pretentious thing either, you're just ugly and not in an interesting way.

You say you're fun, with your multi-purpose uses, you're so wrong, back to my tool analogy - I wouldn't use a spanner to knock in a nail.

The thing is, there are a lot of other fonts out there that are just as much fun as you, myself included. Most of them, more qualified for the job and lets face it, a lot better looking too.

It's these other fonts you're putting out of work, not Helvetica or Futura who can hold their own. It's Challenge, Frankfurter, Hand Drawn and all the other quirky, informal fonts that just do a better job than you ever could. They're not getting the usage they deserve because of you. It's not the c**k-hat typographers you need to worry about you s**t-stick, it's us, the other fonts you think you're mightier than.

So Guess what? Yeah, that's right we've got a posse together, Balloon and Cooper are going to hold you down and then Flash and his brother Flash light are going to work you over a bit. When they're finished, we're just going to leave you alone with One Stroke Script, you've muscled in on his turf once too often.

Just because you're famous doesn't make you good, there is a fast food restaurant in every town, this is not a good thing either. Over saturation can breed contempt and that's the kindest thing I can say about you. Just because the general computer owning population can't see what's wrong with you and just because you're on every computer made since 1994 does not justify your over-use.
So f**k you Comic Sans, you're the fast food of fonts, no substance, no style and of absolutely no beneficial value.
I hope you die alone and penniless in a bin you arrogant, self important jerk.

And if you think of any comebacks, don't bother, I know a whole lot of real comic-book fonts that would just love to know where you live.

Right, I've got a date with Korinna and she comes in extra bold and multilingual, if you know what I mean.

Alas, Poor Yorick!

Here's a panel from something I've been working on... I've edited it (a bit) so as not to give the game away too much (I hope).


I've tried to use black more on this... I was just experimenting really, but moody was the order of the day so, I wanted to at least have some hatching and areas of 'spotted' blacks.

Moore's Mini Me

It's such a stupid little joke...


My sincere apologies to Alan Moore...

My Grimm Brother

One of my cohorts on Fractal Friction, (the not so grimm) Matte Soffe has done me the honour of inking up some of my recent sketches, please read his full blog posting here.


One of the pieces was my recent Dredd sketch, which he also did some beautiful colouring on... and as if that weren't enough he's been universally lovely about promoting it all over the web too... Thanks Matt, you're a gent, a talented one too.

More of Dredd's Head

I dunno if I've mentioned it, but I'm going to be doing a Judge Dredd strip for a future issue of Zarjaz, and very excited I am too!
It's a great little story involving Mopads, the mobile homes of the future... written by Lee Robson, it's got old school style and as a warm up I've just done this quick Dredd head.


I've still not settled on a look that I'm happy with, but this has that gritty brooding quality I've been after for a while, if not exactly the style of previous attempts.