Mutants in Judy Garland Block

I've been working on a commission for another member of the 2000ad forum.
Ian Leonard asked if he could have a Johnny Alpha and Judge Dredd team-up, where those two bad boys were surrounded by mutants and zombies etc, but also including characters from the Wizard of Oz!


These are the cleaned up inks ready to colour.


The raw scan shows through where I've printed out a 'blue-line' version of my digital 'pencils'.

Here's a few stages of development, including the proposed dialogue on the first.


I feel like Johnny and Dredd should be saying something smart arse too, but inspiration is lacking on that front.

Get With The Programme!

This week's 2000ad, prog 1740, features all new stories. One of the occassional 'jumping on progs'. I trust you'll all be doing the sensible thing and getting re-aquainted, introduced or just plain staying with the programme!


This isn't the cover, sadly. This is a mock 2000AD cover based on a Tharg I did for the 2000ad twitter spoof I did with Rich Clements last year - I've spruced it up and added some other effects since then though.

Oh, and I'm now on tumblr too!

Second Psight

Digging around, looking for something I else, I found a coloured version of the Judge Anderson piece I did way back in Sept 2010...


Nothing much else to say, but worth sharing I thought.

The Brothers Grimm

I was contacted recently by Ryan Ballard, who is putting together a whole book of sketches based on the fantastic Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon series Preacher as a present for his Dad. How cool is that?
You can see all the contributions he's got so far at The Preacher Project.

He asked me for a Jody and TC - two of the worst brothers I think that have ever been cooked up.



I went for their flashback versions - as that's where we see what a pair of evil b*stards they really are... if you've read the story, you'll know what TC is up to here.

I showed the initial pencils to Ryan and he asked if I could revise the sketch more inline with the scene where Jesse's Dad get's shot. <<<-- highlight for spoiler. This moved from the implied humour of my initial concept, and would play up the emotional resonance - Ryan also asked if I could add in a young, upset but determined Jesse... TC's dialogue just didn't fit anymore.



I was chuffed to be invited to join the gang, and I was pretty pleased with the result too!

Action Packed

Here's something a bit different from my usual stuff. My good friend Russ asked if I would do a spoof of the fabulous Traction Man is Here by Mini Grey, using him as the subject for his girlfriend Clare's birthday.


Emulating Mini Grey (to a certain extent) and trying to get enough of a likeness was a really enjoyable challenge.

If you haven't read Traction Man, please do follow the link above and invest in a copy - you won't regret having dazzle painted battle pants in your life!

Countdown

Tick, tick, tick...


There simply isn't enough time in the day!

Quick sketch of Old Father Time, The Grim Reaper or Death. Done last night, whilst watching the hilarious Inbetweeners.

Here's another one done as a warm-up this morning, what a cheery soul I am eh?

Pepping It Up

Final art then for the much pimped Tyranny Rex commission:


Sometimes I go to silly lengths for effect. Rob asked for an in joke - the script for Phase V of Zenith... Grant Morrison wrote four books of Zenith, so-called phases, but I doubt there will ever be a fifth. You can only just see it in the final piece, and it took about half an hour of fiddling to get it right - D'Oh! I'm not even going to mention how long it took to find reference for the Our Price bag.


Finally on this, for the process completists amongst you - here are the final inks too.


I'm available for commissions like this and the Dredd piece I did earlier in the year. please feel free to contact me via the e-mail address in the sidebar for a quote.

Mint Sauce

Well on course for the final piece now.


If you missed the previous posts, you can see the progress up to this point here, here and here!

Blown Whale

It's unfinished, it's probably not very funny, but there's no way I'll get something finished up in time... so here's a sketch of what I would have done for Blue Whale over on A Little Bit Bunny.


I'll say it again, Google Sketchup is a an incredible resource... for this piece, I wanted to do one of the classic size comparisons... so I popped along to the sketch-up warehouse and hey presto, some kind soul has already done 90% of the hard work... so thank you Chris for your routemaster bus model, very helpful.

Posing Tyranny

Work in progress again, back on the Tyranny Rex commission. Rob wanted me to vary a few things from the interim layout but I wasn't quite happy with Tyranny anyway, so I tried a couple of extra poses out...


I got a bit carried away and then couldn't decide which one worked best... if in doubt, let the client decide!


Rob chose 'E'... and suggested I wrap her tail around a dancer's pole! Things are coming together nicely now, and I'll post up the rough pencils here in the next couple of days.

What's new Pussy Cat?

Not much that I can talk about to be honest...

This weekend was a dash around extravaganza. Bristol Comic Expo on the Saturday and a family event on the Sunday. All in all a good weekend.

There were some fine chats had with some good folk, and as is usual with a convention, I missed loads of other friends I'd wanted to see. On this occasion, not at all surprising as I was buzzing around so much in the short time I was there.

Thanks to John Freeman, Brady Webb, Joel Meadows & Gary Marshall, Emma Hayley, Andi Ewington and Eddie Deighton for very kind words about my portfolio - I've got some good feedback to think about and there are some very interesting irons in the fire as a result of the dash around, but more on that as things pan out.

It was nice to meet a lot of the members of the 2000ad forum (some old and some new friends amongst them) and I had great (if brief) chats also with Dunk Nimmo, Mike Carroll and Leonie, John Higgins, Nick Dyer, Dave Evans, Rich Clements, Matt Timson, Stacy Whittle, Jim Campbell, Emma Vieceli, Dave Stokes, Vicky Stonebridge, Nick Wilkinson, Cy Dethan, Steven Downey, Matt Gibbs, Chris Wildgoose, Matthew Mclaughlin, Owen Watts, Dave Thompson, Conor Boyle, Liz Boyle, Kerrin Shaw and last but not least (and enigmatic even in person) The Emperor... apologies to anyone I've forgotten (please let me know and I'll add a link for you!).

I don't really have anything else I can show at the moment so, in the meantime, here's a piece I did for A Little Bit Bunny a while ago.


The creature was Owl, but hopefully it doesn't need too much more explanation. It was a nice distraction, and hopefully shows some other skills. Blue Whale is the next creature, if you felt like joining in!

Lapping it up

After the rough sketches and some discussion, Rob decided that he'd like to include Zenith in the commission piece too.

I suggested that Tyranny could be a dancer at a club called Peppermint Dino... the joke is kind of obvious, but I thought it was funny enough to run with.


I've done a few options for Tyranny's final pose and there are a few other bits to address in the final pencils. Rob seems happy, so far and the final piece should work out quite well!

That's about it for now, I'm off to Bristol Comic Expo on Saturday - bit of a flying visit really, if you see me - stop me and say Hi!

Tyranny Pin-up

I'm currently doing a Tyranny Rex commission. After Kapow, I was contacted by Rob Ellis, who is a bit of a Tyranny Rex fan.

Rob wanted me to do a commission for him, but asked if there was any way to break down the costs. I wanted to be as flexible as I could and so we agreed on a process that would involve him buying all the preparatory work as I do it.

These are my initial sketches, very loosely using 'Cheesecake' pin-ups as a starting point.


We've moved a little away from that initial concept now, to try tell more of a story... but I thought it was worth showing these quick process pieces.


I like the cheekiness of this final one, but hopefully we're working towards something that encompasses that and much more!



This week will be another slow one for the blog as I'll be preparing for Bristol Comic Convention - where hopefully there will be exciting developments - I'm only there on the Saturday, so if you see me streaking past in a blur, please stop me and say Hi!

Dependent upon what I can get sorted, I may post the next stage that Rob and I have agreed on before I dash out the door!

Toad in the hole

Over on the A Little Bit Bunny Blog, I'm late in the month of the Toad...

Initially I was going to do a Sagbelly, from an Episode of the classic Judge Dredd epic "The Judge Child". I got pretty close to a finished piece in photoshop... I was trying out an all digital approach...


...but then I remembered, I'd already done a Judge Dredd piece over there very recently!


Then I experimented with the idea of those psychedelic Toads... but toads are such weird looking creatures anyway, doing any sort of twist was causing me a headache...

If in doubt, go with a joke.

So, if you wanna see what I sketched out really quickly this morning...you know what to do!