Sneaky Peek

A bit slow on the up-take news-wise, but it looks like a cracking little Dredd strip I finally finished late last year will be out over the summer in Zarjaz issue 15.


Judge Dredd, The Taking of Mopad 456 by Lee Robson and myself.

Some stages for this teaser panel:


part of the bonkers amount of work I did in google sketch-up... in my opinion you can't really tell how much I did used models, for good or bad!




sketched over to add good old Joe Dredd in there. He's celebrating 35 years in comics this week! 2000ad was 35 last week...





here's the inks, see, most of that modelling was a waste of time, or certainly seems to fade into the background.





finally, the toned version ready to have some textures added.

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.

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!

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.

Resurrection

Here then, as promised in yesterday's post: Johnny Alpha, back in the land of the living.


If you missed it yesterday over on Scotch Corner, here's my Durham red piece mocked up into a prog cover.


And The Johnny Alpha one too.

Scotch Corner is Two

Well, last month I was delighted to be invited to contribute once again to Scotch Corner, the Caledonian Comic Artists Collective who're celebrating their blogging birthday this month with a series of guest slots. I'm am amongst some seriously talented folk contributing, too many cool people to name have already contributed - and there's more to come!

Previously, I've submitted Bat-world pieces to their guest slot: a Harley Quinn, a Joker, and a Catwoman, but no surprises, it is 2000ad that I have turned to on this special occasion. Specifically the world of Strontium Dog, and as is usual for me, I gravitated to the girl in the gang - Durham Red.


You can see the full coloured version of that over on Scotch Corner. Also note the edited hand... after I'd inked it, and saught the advice of trusted indivduals, I felt this version was too claw like.

If you like this, then please come back tomorrow as I'll be posting up a piece that celebrates the return of Johnny Alpha, in fact, the resurrection of Johnny Alpha and his imminent return to the prog - as trailered in prog 1742, see the prog or ECBT2000ad for the details!

Termight Motivation

So a post on ECBT2000ad made me revisit something I did a couple of weeks ago.



Pretty simple as I had the graphics already sitting around on my computer. 30 minute spoof- lovely.

Kerchakk!

Now that the new issues of Zarjaz and Dogbreath are out... (you'll have bought them already I take it!) I can share something more of the strip I did for the ABC Warriors special.


This is the first two pages as a taster.


As I mentioned in my "Black Hole" post, I was trying to get an essence of other artists, one of who was the BIZ... not sure I really like the finish to be honest, but when I showed it to Tharg at Kapow, he thought it had more energy...

Surrender Dorothy!

Now in Technicolor!

I'm just about done on the Wizard of Oz, Judge Dredd and Johnny Alpha cross-over commission.


There's still a decision to be made over the final dialogue though...

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.

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!

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!