The Un-dead

A couple of friends have (jokingly) asked whether I was dead. Since it felt like I had dropped off the map.


No, I'm not dead... I'm not the living dead, or more appropriately for my specific sphere of interest - I'm not Judge Death either...

...I'm just busy on something that is taking a lot of time and not something I can show.

Normal service will (I hope) be resumed shortly!

Wasp Block

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!

Two Birthdays

This post marks the third birthday of my blog. Weirdly, this is also post 333, does that make it 50% evil?!

A good pal said to me over the seasonal break that he would like to see my take on The Dude, from the Coen Bros. fabulous The Big Lebowski.
I've got a real soft spot for The Dude, His Dudeness or El Duderino (if you're not into the whole brevity thing).

Like the film itself, there was a nice syncronicity to events, my friend's birthday is tomorrow, my blog would be 3 today, it was a nice quick sketch that I knew he was after and that suited my current status of waiting for feedback on the project I'm working on. Nothing was f**cked, So I drew him a card!


I don't think I've quite captured what I was after, but Jeff Bridges is a tricky chap to depict, even trying to get an essence of The Dude is a tall order... the desire to include (clever) quote related 'in jokes' was definitely not satisfied and originally I intended to do a group shot including Walter and Donny too, but sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes... well, he eats you!

Happy Easter... oh!

It's time to announce a little sideline project I've been doing with my good chums Matt Dawson and Phil Morgan...


It's called A Little Bit Bunny and the basic idea is that each month, we all do an illustration based upon a chosen creature. The brief is about as open as it can be, but with the stipulation that a 'twist' of some description is made to the creature in question...

There are quite a few on the blog already to search through and also a small number on each of our blogs from before we decided to try to make it a monthly thing with some rules.

Hope you enjoy the project, and Season's Greetings to you all.

2000AD Xmas Party

The 2000adonline forum virtual advent calendar is still going strong. About a month ago, one of the board members, Dirk Van Dom, asked whether I'd be willing to contribute something to help illustrate a game he was trying to produce/write/organise!

Here's a cropped section from my illustration...


To find the full (cheeky) image you'll have to play the game!

I'll let Dirk explain the idea:

Quote from: Van Dom
Remember the old ‘choose your own adventure’ stories? Well, I’ve prepared one for you to read/play, that centres around a night at a 2000ad Christmas party, as you mingle with various characters, get involved in various situations, and just generally try to make it through the night. The rules are simple. DON’T get eaten by Zombo. DON’T send Slaine into a warp spasm. And, above all, DON’T piss off Judge Dredd. If you can manage all that, you MIGHT impress Tharg and be rewarded, you MAY score with a really hot chick (3 to choose from!), and you COULD foil a devious plot to sabotage the party and blow everyone to smithereens! Depending on the choices you make and the way you progress through the story, there are a number of different objectives you can be presented with. There are also quite a few sticky endings you can come to if you don’t choose carefully, so watch out!

PARTY CRASH! THE 2000AD CHRISTMAS BLOWOUT, 2010!

Early Festivities

Just as early with this as I was with last year's e-card...



With all the snow we've been having and also because I'm feeling very seasonal (we just put up our tree this week) it seemed appropriate to get the festive season off to an early start!

Well, it's been pretty seasonal here for a while, what with the 2000ad advent calendar and my Cycle Lifestyle cover.

MERRY FESTIVENESSES TO ONE AND ALL!

Support 2000ad

If you are a fan of 2000ad, run a blog or wordpress/live journal etc. please, include this nifty little gadget on your sidebar. The widget should, if clicked, lead you to the digital download of the current issue of 2000ad at their online shop.


Here's the code, for you to copy and paste. The prog will change as each new one becomes available for digital download.

<iframe scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" width="105" height="200" src="http://shop.2000adonline.com/widgets/latest_prog/index.php"></iframe></code>
Hopefully, even if it only helps to reawaken one lapsed reader, it will have been worth the effort. Thanks in advance.

Austerity Measures

It's virtual advent Calendar time again over on the 2000ad forums.


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)

If you're interested, last year's entry is here.

Karloff for Zuul

I've just done an Artswap with a good pal and long time supporter of mine Graeme Neil Reid. A while ago, Graeme was doing a series of Ghostbuster illustrations and I asked if he was doing a Sigourney Weaver as Zuul, could I have the original in return for an illustration by me...


I'm chuffed to say he was up for it and chose a very broad topic of "Characters from Hammer and Universal Horror movies"... I have to confess to a soft spot for Frankenstein's monster (one of the first things I ever shared on this blog was a "Frankie"). So it was long over due to do another... this time I tried to capture Boris Karloff in his career defining role as the monster...


I hope Graeme likes the illustration when he finally receives it (weather permitting), and I look forward to the Gatekeeper arriving in due course!

Thanks Graeme!

The Interview

You may remember I recently plugged John Freeman's book Sci-Fi Art Now.

As part of the promotion for the book he's been interviewing all the contributors... mine is now up on the Sci-Fi Art Now blog.

I hope it's of interest, and not pretentious... I am excited all the same to have been interviewed about my work!

Judge Dredd Movie Still

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.

Push Pineapple

Joe Pineapples from the ABC Warriors.


Just a couple of quick sketches, trying to define how I want to depict him.

Very Complimentary

Well, I've just received a couple of comp copies of two publications I've got work in...


As previously blogged, I've got 'The Squadron' in Sci-Fi Art Now, a thumping good coffee table style book crammed with fantastic pieces of art from some seriously impressive names. You can also read about my process for that piece here from earlier in the year.
Sci-Fi Art Now is available from all good bookshops and on amazon still for the bargain price of £13.99

The other illustration is for a story called 'Stone' by Neil Beynon in the British Fantasy Award winning anthology title Murky Depths.


Please order your copy of Murky Depths #14 here.

Icon Idiocy

The icons/avatars for the twitter spoof were, for the most part, new and done far too large!


Hopefully they did their job.