Get Well Carlos Comic

The public version of the Get Well Carlos Comic, aka Supersquirrel Undefeated aka The Secret Project is now available for download.


Two options for download, both are a 54Mb. These links will not work forever, so I would suggest you download sooner rather than later to avoid disappointment.

zshare

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I'd also like to suggest that you make a donation to a Cancer charity too, by way of payment for the comic.

Super Secret Squirrel

About a month ago, the sad and sudden news that Carlos Ezquerra had been taken ill with Lung Cancer broke on the 2000ad forum. The good news was that it had been caught in time.

A short while later, I, and many others (including some professionals) were contacted by Mark Howard (The Legendary Shark) and asked if we would like to contribute something to a get well comic that would be given to Carlos. The importance of Carlos Ezquerra's work in 2000ad's history and it's meaning to hundreds of adoring fans cannot be understated. With John Wagner, he created both Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog, two of the comic's most enduring characters. His work was also something of an inspiration to me in my youth, so my answer to the question posed was a resounding yes, I want to contribute something!.


A quick e-mail to Rich Clements and Dave Evans to ask whether they'd like to collaborate on a special 'Teen Wulf' for the project and a simple suggestion that it involve Wulf's Dad, who would be a doppleganger for Carlos yeilded the swift and genius response from Rich, a script for 'Cucumber' (a favoured word of Wulf's in his dealings with Johnny Alpha) arrived in my in box. I had enormous fun illustrating the strip, and I'm sure I've not done Carlos justice, but it's the thought that counts, right? I'm not going to share Dave's lettering for the page here, because there will be a publicly available link to a download of the whole comic that I will share when the time comes.


With my contribution made, I thought nothing more of the project until I received an e-mail via Dave that Mark had secured a deal for printing the comic, the printer would do the job for a substantial discount if he could get a logo designed for his motorcycle club... could I help out? Well, again, it was an easy decision, of course, if I can help out - I will.

Luckily the illustration above, did the trick and with one happy printer, the project could go full steam ahead!


Again, I thought nothing more about the project until Mark posted on the 2000ad forum asking if anyone could help out with special duties... In the spirit of the project's secrecy I responded simply to ask what the problem was and if I could help again... Mark desperately needed a cover, had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted and needed it pretty swiftly - I should have been working on other things, but it felt like an important job to help out on, so again, I found myself contributing to the project.

Yesterday, the comic was received by Carlos and he expressed his gratitude to all involved through a message to Mark on facebook. It has meant a great deal to me to be involved in honouring a hero of mine and I only hope it helps speed his recovery.

To Mark the Shark, all who contributed and those who simply kept the secret, I salute you, it makes me proud to be a fan of 2000ad!

Violent Actions!

Free to download right now is issue #18 of Violent! There are some corking strips written and drawn by some amazing creative talents. As it's FREE surely it's worth checking out!


The man behind it all, Jay Eales asked me some time ago whether I'd be up for doing a cover - I jumped at the opportunity... not least because Violent! takes it's modus operandi from ACTION and that is the comic that 2000ad in many ways rose from the ashes of, but also because Violent! is a darn fine read.


ACTION's demise was in part as a fallout created by a cover for the strip 'Kids Rule OK' that garnered political attention. The cover had been illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra and in my discussions with Jay, we thought it would be nice to pay homage not only to the comic, but also to Carlos himself who has been seriously ill recently.


Hopefully, I've done it justice and Jay came up with a stonking strap line too... but you'll have to follow this link if you want to see the final cover!

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.

Sci-Fi Art Now Update

Well, I had confirmation that one of the pieces I submitted for John Freeman's Sci-Fi Art Now book is to be included! The piece is called The Squadron and I blogged about the process/journey that resulted in the finished piece earlier in the year.

The really cool bit about all this is that some of my art will be in a bona-fide hardback art book that you will be able to order:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
More details about the book are available from HarperCollins and John has started a blog about Sci-Fi Art Now to help promote it too... but with all the quality artists involved, it will be worth owning anyway, please help make this book a success by pre-ordering it!


For now, I'm not going to show the piece that will be included, instead I'll show the other piece I submitted. Regular visitors to my blog will recognise this (I assume) from when I reworked it recently as a 2000AD prog one redux.

I had already posted the very rough sketch for the Alien Blob and Space girl as well... there was even a teaser.

I'm very chuffed that my art will make it into Sci-Fi Art Now as it's going to be exactly the sort of book that I used to pour over as a child... this is another big tick in the personal goals chart!

Poison Ivy

If all things have gone according to plan, then blogger will have automatically posted this in absentia.
You may remember a while ago, I posted about a cool blog called covered where the idea is that you rework a classic comic cover in your own style... again, if things have gone according to schedule, then my version of Batman 181 should be visible on Robert Goodin's covered blog right now! So, I'm now free to reveal to you good folk the full image...


Here again, for reference, is my copy of the original cover from June 1966 with art by Infantino and Anderson.


Remember to cross your fingers for me today, as I'm at the Birmingham International Comics' Convention and I'll be trying to meet up with editors and professionals who might be able to help me onto the all important first rung of the professional ladder!

Covered!

Wahoo! The reworked cover for Batman 181 I was working on will be featured on Robert Goodin's covered blog... it's scheduled to appear one month from today - pinch punch!


Here's another teaser, but I'll remind you again, don't worry about that!

2000AD cover competition

Over on the 2000AD forums, they have a monthly art competition. This month is cover-recreations or "cover versions"... Basically anything you want to do: a straight recreation or a mix up with 2000AD characters and albums, dvds or book covers - even other comics...
I've chosen to do a cover that never was - but potentially should have been... Fink Angel, one of my all time favourite Dredd-world villains first appeared in prog 193. The initial story ran for 4 progs, but Fink would return again...


In the story, a cover to a newspaper falls into Fink's hands alerting him that his estranged family have all been sentenced to death by Judge Dredd - well naturally, being the Cursed Earth homicical maniac that he is, he sets out to avenge his kin!

There has been some corking entries already and I've thrown last month's recreation of prog 310 into the mix already. Something rattled around my goldfish memory and reminded me that I'd done another (sample) cover for 2000AD...

Last July - very nearly a year to the day in fact... I presented this to the blogging fraternity.
That was when the light went on in my brain and I knew what I wanted to be for the first time in over a decade. Looking at this - I can see how much more accomplished the Fink cover is in comparison - nothing really wrong with this Dawn of the Dead spoof...
but I feel like I've come such a long way in what has surprisingly been only a year!

Oddly enough there are some pretty strong compositional similarities in these two pieces... a slight twist where the villain is the wide-stanced focus (although he shares some of those quirky zombie characteristics) and the "hero" is in the background - other wise there's not much to tell, which I think means that the basics of my approach aren't that different and I am just honing my skills.

This Is Zarjaz!

The massive news that I've been sitting on for a couple of weeks is that I have designed a new logo for the 2000AD fanzine Zarjaz. Please do check out the home of the Fanzine at The Quaequam Blog.


Yes, it's another one of those ambigram things. I'm really pretty chuffed about this, and for another scoop here how it's going to look on the cover of issue 08!


I also have a strip in this issue as previously blogged about. Copies will be ready for BICS on 3rd October and will be available there, via The Quaequam Blog or the FutureQuake shop. There will also be new issues of Dogbreath (with another strip by me) and Future Quake available too.

Awesome Rogue Trooper artwork courtesy of the ever brilliant PJHolden and Steve Denton (colours).

Gonna have to go before I start giggling like a little girl - I'm so excited!

Freaked Me Out, Man

Prog 1639 dropped through my door this morning... and what was on the cover? Yes, that's right a recreation of that classic prog 310 cover that I had myself done homage to earlier in the week.
One has to ask whether there is something in the cosmos... a weird psychoactive something or... possibly a result of a hive mind thing. which ever way you look at it - it's definitely unsettling when coincidences like this occur!

There are definite parallels that can be drawn between the two Dredd tales "The Starborn Thing" and "It Came from Bea Arthur Block" and so it would seem a natural thing to pay respect to the former, a classic from the 2000AD vault.

I have to admit that I did have prior warning of this potentially mind-bending coincidence before my prog arrived today. Shortly after I posted it on the 2000AD online forum, my old pal PJHolden sent me this sneak preview. He had this to say about it:

"...the idea of using the McMahon cover occured to me while talking to Gordon on the phone about the wigs story (probably before the first script was even written). I just thought it'd be hilarious. (attached is the cover sketches I sent to Matt - cover 1 was a half hearted attempted to give an alternative...)


Tried my best to evoke McMahon without mimicking him, did that by using strokes instead of solid black, using the same pose (obviously - though drawn to fit how I normally draw DREDD) and colouring the artwork in the style I remember from when McMahon would do coloured work in the Annuals."

For me, I think this is a really interesting opportunity to observe how three very well respected artists have interpreted the same scene.

Here then, as a comparison sort of thing... Ezquerra's original from the actual strip (actually taken from the double page spread in prog 311) and McMahon's re-interpretation of that for the cover to prog 310.


There is a real continuity that I had not expected to see - four very different artists all depicting the same thing in their own way. From a story telling point of view the impact can only truly be acheived with a first person perspective - it's the attention grabbing aspect you are after. I can only hope that mine holds up in such illustrious company!

I'm going to be interested to hear what's said about this on the forum!

*EDIT* PJ has also put a posting about his first 2000AD cover on the wonderful Eclectic Micks blog.*EDIT*

Cover Recreation

On the 2000ADonline forum over the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of inspiring cover recreations from old 2000ADs.
Firstly there was Matt Soffe's tribute to Mick McMahon's 1985 annual cover
and secondly there was Steve Millar's Patrick Goddard commission to recreate prog 199's cover.


I decided to have a crack at my own recreation. For a number of reasons I chose prog 310, great Mick McMahon cover for the Carlos Ezquerra illustrated story Starborn Thing.


I went with the current logo as I didn't want to too closely recreate the same cover. I tried to inject some of the original artists' styles into my piece, but unfortunately, I don't think it's all quite worked how I wanted it to.



Here for reference are the initial stages before all the glossy rendering and graphics got slapped on. If anyone wants it, I'll happily swap or sell the original inks to this piece.

Valentine's Day

Did this for my lovely wife's Valentine's Day card.


There's not much to say except that really.

Other than this marks the first whole year of being self employed as an illustrator...

That's cause to celebrate!

Taormina Pulp Fiction

I decided to have some fun with a spoof, pulp-fiction paperback cover to an imaginary spin-off book.



There's a bigger version of this over on the Taormina blog where you can see the cover in better detail.

I did some searching around for covers from mass market paperbacks to help with this, I hope I've struck the right balance.

Dredd (cover - finished)

Well, it's just about finished... I've noticed a couple of things I'm going to tickle and adjust but it's pretty much there.



I'm really happy how this piece has turned out. I think it works well as teaser for the story - hopefully Tharg The Mighty will think so too!

Dredd (inked)

That's more like it!

Dredd (tablet inked)

Brian Bolland now uses his computer for inking and colouring...
I've got a sneaking suspicion that the very popular Boo Cook also works digitally.

I thought I'd give digital inking a shot as an experiment.



I'm not sure I'm happy with the results - the gains made are easily outweighed by the fact that the inking is a little soulless. Put simply, I don't like it - I'm off now to do things as they were intended - man, paper and pen!

< for Illustration Friday, I've canned this approach! >

Dredd (colour rough)

I really did get over excited...



I boosted the levels on the pencil rough in photoshop and then boshed down some very rough colour. I wanted to check that the colour scheme I had in mind would work... I'm tempted to go more silhouette with the zombies , but I quite like the contrast created with the pink foam.

Dredd (cover)

I was floundering a bit on my page layouts and needed to get some focus. My good pal Matt suggested I try a pin-up/cover for the story. Usually, for a sample, they say not to do splashy pin-ups, as editors want to see that you can progress a story sequentially. In my opinion the best 'how to' book for this is Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner but How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way is also pretty good...


I really got into drawing the Zombies on this, had fun with the anatomy - trailing feet and claw-like hands... it helped me put the fun, cartoony element back into my stuff. I'm going to revisit the pencils on page one and two after I have mapped out the next couple of pages. I've knocked this up into a cover with all the logos and title treatment because I got a bit over-excited I'm afraid!