Special Project

Just before New Year, my lovely wife gave birth to this little bundle of joy.

Ted Sampson Levell
Needless to say, things may be a little quiet on the blogging front for a while...
Please do check in every once in a while though, as I do have some other exciting projects I will be working on this year and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

Season's Greetings

It's that time of year again.


I've just sent out my e-card to (hopefully) all of my friends, family, clients and collaborators etc.

En-masse e-mail delivery paranoia demands that I state here that if you haven't received the card, feel you should have or would like to receive it next year... please do that which is necessary to alert me, fix your filters and/or notify your e-mail provider that I'm not spam!

It's a truly awful pun, but that is, in-keeping with festive or seasonal jokes found in crackers...

The initial idea was just a horrible cardigan made into a card, like so many 'Christmas jumpers' of my youth - after sketching a perplexed and generic 'every-man' holding up said offending garment, it occurred that the real joke was in the misunderstanding. Why it became Peter Parker and MJ is anybody's guess, but my guess would fall firmly in the camp of "because I like drawing girls".

The usual 'stages' stuff follows:

digital roughs

sketch-up lounge guide

final digital "pencils"

inks

All the very best of the season to you all, have a good one!

Dante Claus

Yesterday was my turn to submit to the 2000ad virtual advent calendar.

A terrible, terrible pun drifted into my mind - but one that had to be done! Nikolai Dante is the swashbuckling lead character in the 2000ad saga of the same name, created by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser. For the uninitiated, Jena Makarov is his love interest (a frequently thwarted one).


here are the pencils and inks for those of you who are interested in the process.




I had a number of captions and dialogue options, some more smutty than others, and I even asked for some opinions, and they were as divided as my own... in the end I left the 'sack' jokes alone, despite the puerile joy of them. You are welcome to suggest any and all alternate options in the comments though!

2000ad Advent 2011

For the past couple of years, Pete Wells, charming host of the 2000ad covers uncovered blog has run an online advent calendar on the 2000ad forum.

This year is no different, and once again, my effort is early doors number 2. For those who're interested, and haven't seen them before, here are my efforts for 2009 and 2010.

Not wanting to spoil any potential surprises, here's a crop of my rough.

The final version should be up on the forum already, but if not it will be soon!

You can keep up with the wonderful entries each day until the 24th by calling in to the forum topic here.

All round Comics' Geezer.

Jim Campbell should need no introduction, as a letterer at least, but what a lot of people don't know is that he is also a talented artist too.


Jim did the above illustration in response to my Judge Kev photo (see previous post of me in a Planet Replica's Judge's helmet) that was taken by Bolt-01 at Thoughtbubble.

ThoughtBubble 2011

I was at Thought bubble in Leeds over the weekend. Thanks, first of all to Dave Stokes for organising a pass for me.

I met up with other friends too, some old, some new and had some great chats with them. Thanks go to, Rich Clements, Dave Evans, Owen Watts and Jazz, Judge Burdis, Lee Langford, Dunk Nimmo, Eddie and Jon at Com.X, Lee Robson, John Burdis, Pye Parr, Luke Preece, Stephen Downey, Vicky Stonebridge, Emma Vieceli, Conor and Liz Boyle, Nick Dyer, Stacey Whittle and her two charming little girls, Pete Wells, Spirite 68, Matt Badham, Abby Ryder, Daniel Carey George, Guy (Large 48), Terry Martin, Alex, Matt Smith (Tharg), Mike Marshall, Nic Wilkinson, Mark Laming and Dan McDaid, sorry to any one I've forgotten in that list.

I also achieved a childhood dream thanks to Planet Replicas:

Judge Kev
There were some very interesting developments, but I want to wait to see how they pan out before blurting out what they might be!

The Badger

Cripes! A month between posts...


This was done as a very quick entry for this month's A Little Bit Bunny, pop on over there to see this guy as I intended to present him...

I vaguely thought he could be Wolverine's dad!

When Doodles go...

...awry?


I was doodling, this is what happened.

What the hell is it?

Yet Another Dredd

This was quickly sketched out whilst on holiday last week... used it as inking warm-up over the last couple of days.

The Four Brick Judges

Following the 2000ad Lego commission, Ian Leonard asked if I could expand the concept by doing cover recreations of classic 2000ad covers. He had a number in mind, but first up was Brian Bolland's brilliant cover to prog 225.


For ref, I've included the original Bolland version below.


I missed a trick though, I should have edited in a 'Legoland' price... if Ian asks for any more of these, I will add that into the price list somewhere!

Babble Project

A little while ago, Lee Robson, asked me if I'd be interested in taking part in a project to help promote his (and Bryan Coyle's) upcoming Graphic Novel Babble, furthermore, it would mean doing my own take on BlueSpear for it! Naturally, I was coy, and simply said I'd be delighted. What was more, he'd squared the way with Andi Ewington and Com.X and they were happy for Lee to use my depiction of BlueSpear on his promotional project! Excited? Me? You betcha!


Lee has some other top characters and creators lined up and the project continues this week with Dave Evans' Whistler.

Boing Boing

Here's something I did for Pete Wells of the 2000ad covers uncovered blog fame.



I'd owed him a sketch for a while, since HiEx 2010 in fact, where for some reason, I only did half a sketch for him.

Lesson is More, Moron Less.

I've had this idea bumping around in my head for close to ten years now. Usually it would get paraded out when I heard about someone doing something stupid... the 'less/fewer' error was pointed out to me by my wife, Vicky, some time ago. Learning from the mistake (in the spirit of the comment itself) meant that I had to stop saying it, even though I still thought it was funny.


The blackboard and 'teacher's correction' idea hit me this morning and so I quickly put this together in photoshop. The idea, like me, is bettered by Vicky's input I think.

I doubt very much that the phrase was ever original to me but It's nice when an old idea finally comes to fruition and you don't see someone else who's made something of 'your' idea before you do.

2000ad Lego

Another commission for Ian Leonard. Delighted to do this one after the Wizard of Oz one I did just a couple of months ago.


Hopefully it speaks for itself - I think it could really work as a series of Lego minifigures.

Here are my rough sketch sheets - yes, I cheated - I used a template figure printed a few out and drew all over the top them...