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.
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.
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!
Amongst other bits and pieces and preparation for this weekend's Kapow, I've been doing a commission for John Burdis, I'd done something for The Cellar of Dredd before, a quick single illustration of Hondo-Cit's Inspector Inaba. I'd done that under my own steam following the fab time I had at the Hi-Ex Comicon, but this time, John had something in mind.
The following is all about the "process" for those of you who like to see the work in progress stuff.
I did an initial sketch based upon John's original brief:
"Dredd stood in the middle of a street with dead superheroes strewn all around him and Joe saying something along the lines of "Costumed vigilantes, leave the real crime fighting to me!" The characters who would be dead would include Superman (head missing definitely), Batman, Wonderwoman, Captain America and all those other US bods."
One thought kept floating around my brain, a pile of dead super-heroes and something in Brian Bolland's classic cover to Prog 2000 kept nagging at me as well.
John liked the inital sketch but had a couple of requests for additions if I could manage them:
First up was a simple addition to the roster of the dispatched: "Green Arrow's arm with a broken bow"
Next was just a weapons' upgrade to the "Colt Widowmaker " instead of the Anti-Hero gun I'd been musing over as the reason why Dredd was now able to dispatch these super-heroes.
Finally, a nice way to really make the commission a personal one: " a large pristine BURDIS BLOCK and a couple of derelict smaller blocks with the names MARVEL and DC".
In Dredd's world, towering apartment Blocks are often named after famous people, sometimes for satirical reasons, sometimes equally as a tribute to that person. I felt that DC and MARVEL blocks could nicely be rolled into the one (albeit well beaten-up) DEE CEE MARVILLE block.
I wanted the blocks to say something about John and the two comic companies respectively... aside from the beaten-up aspect of DEE CEE MARVILLE, I wanted the block to hint at those companies' stock-in-trade - Super-heroes!
John's online forum name is COMMANDO FORCES, for reason's which are obvious to anyone who knows him. Hopefully my intentions for his 'block' shouldn't need much more explaining. For the DEE CEE MARVILLE block, I wanted it to look as much a possible like a cape flowing over the shoulders of a hero, almost immediately that dictated a very Art Deco style, evocative of old movie theatres.
By this point I've switched into Google Sketch-up to muck about with the architecture, mainly because if we decide to change the POV, I haven't got to reconstruct the difficult curvature on that art Deco styled block... but it wasn't there that my main problem would be!
I had inadvertently created, by virtue of the military style helmet, a very phallic looking building... "could you put some sort of roof sports complex/airport style thing somewhere around/on that part?". Thankfully we caught it and had a chance to make a suitable alteration.
The only other thing John wanted was "More gore on those bodies." I guess the super-hero fan in me was just subconsciously trying to limit the damage to all those "good guys", but, you've got to give the client what they want!
I'd been concerned over Dredd's footing and so I added in Reed Richards, utlising his 'rubbery' consistency to nicely fill in the space between Superman and WonderWoman.
After showing the last version to John, I couldn't help but think we'd lost the 'Military' in the styling of 'Burdis Block' in favour of Miners or worse still, Doozers!
The easiest way to show him some alternatives was a little fly-around movie taken out of Sketch-up. I can't advocate strongly enough the time saving aspects of this program for me, where previously (hours of projecting the perspective correctly) would have ended up making me want to stab myself in the head.
Throughout the process, there had been dissatisfaction on both our parts over the wording of Dredd's proclamation, neither of ours had been punchy enough. John had started a forum topic to ask for help and there had been some great and some very witty suggestions, but it wasn't until my good pal and Fractal Friction co-contributer Chris Askham suggested a short and sweet "When are you CREEPS gonna learn?", that either John or myself found a 'fit' for the illustration.
We we're all happy until John posted my initial sketch in the same forum topic...
PJ Holden (who has always been insightful and helpful to me from my very earliest foray into the comics business) suggested the even shorter and IMO 'sweeter' "WHO'S NEXT?". Sorry Chris, but you know when something's right.
With the final version okayed by John, I turned the 'pencils' into a 'blueline' ready to print out. Using another tip I'd picked up from PJ, I left the 'speech' to print out in Black for crispness in the final artwork.
I inked the dead super-heroes first because I knew there would be a lot of work in that part, in fact it took most of a morning to do, but after getting Dredd inked in, it was all fairly plain sailing and came together quite quickly!
I sent a scan of the final thing to John yesterday and I'm pleased to say he's very happy with it and looking forward to seeing it in the flesh at Kapow!
I guess that's it really, other than to ask: "WHO'S NEXT?"
A new post from me over on A Little Bit Bunny. Unfortunately, it's not as finished as I would like, but I've received some feedback I was waiting for on another project and suddenly, play-time is over again!
Here's a quick sketch-up model I made for the main design element... and yes, that's Judge Dredd's Lawmaster in there... not that you see much of it in the final piece!
Dirty Frank is one of my favourite characters from 2000ad at the moment. He's a long term undercover Judge who talks about himself in the third person and is named after a Pearl Jam song. He's part of the Lowlife strip written by Rob Williams. I showed Rob the inks for this and I'm thoroughly chuffed to say he like it... so, I showed it to Tharg, who thought Frank's left arm looked a little awkward... I can't see it myself, but I'll bear it in mind next time I'm asking him for work!
He needs to hire me soon though, or it'll be me picking through the bins for food scraps! (only joking)
So the first image of Karl Urban as Judge Dredd has been released and we're less than a week into filming...
There's been mainly a positive reaction, but I'm all kinds of excited about this, just great news for the comic.
This is a really quick and possibly wrong extrapolation of what I think we are looking at in the still.
I also think the respirator will pull down to create a fully enclosed helmet as per the inset... don't know about the mechanics of it, but it'll look pretty cool, certainly quite menacing if Dredd was striding out of some gas-filled underpass.
Thought I'd just share (again) my speculative concept from Feb 09... I think what we've got is a lot better than that... although there are lots of similarities.
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.
I may have gone a little bit overboard with this whole SketchUp preparation... hopefully it should make the resultant strip look a whole lot cooler though!
This is a (admittedly not very good) fly-through of the main locations within the mopad I'll be needing in the strip.
I've also made a lawgiver, based on the one I did in my most recent Dredd sketch, which my good pal Matt Soffe did a bang-up colouring job on here by the way.
I think, this lawgiver, with the lawmaster and the bonkers sized scene of Mega-City 1 from last week, rounds out the collection of reference models for Judge Dredd's world that I should need on this strip...
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!
To go along with the Lawmaster I made a while ago in Google Sketch-Up, I've built a section of Mega-City One. I've invested some time making vehicles and zooms and bits and pieces to help me frame my panels for a Judge Dredd strip by Lee Robson that I've blogged a little about before.
Click image for a huge, zoom-able version
This is still a work in progress and I'll probably use different views than the one shown here, but that's the beauty of a simple 3D package, I make this once, then I can move things around for the best framing of each panel without having to reconstruct, redraw and redo all those little details again and again. Admittedly, I will to some extent, because I will only be using the exported images as under-lays for each of the panels.
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!
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.
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.
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!
