2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Maul Cop!
17th February 2018
Bzzzt… Bzzzzzzt… Beep! Cough! Cough! Splutter! (Fart!) Wooooooooop! P-WELS droid is online! Battery reserves at 2%… Insert pasty immediately…
Welcome to 2000 AD Covers Uncovered, where we take a regular look behind Tharg’s plush green curtain to marvel at the skill, ingenuity, imagination and alcohol that go into the creation of the galaxy’s most zarjaz covers! This week, art droid Nick Percival takes a break from painting Judge Dredd battling scary monsters to paint a picture of erm, Judge Dredd battling a scary monster. Tharg is too kind!
Earthlets will be aware that Dredd has been sold to slavers in the frozen Siberian Wastes, and is being forced to fish for deadly squidipedes by his evil handlers. The big bad in the story is called Maul (his parents couldn’t decide on Maurice or Paul, so they went with Maul,) a heartless, virtually indestructible villain. In the absence of any Hi-Ex, Dredd is going to have to use all his wits and ingenuity to beat him and get back to the Meg.
Nick said “It’s always fun to pop back to Dredd and this cover was a nice little palette cleanser between finishing the ‘Dark Judges: Dominion’ series for the Megazine and starting on its sequel, ‘The Torture Garden’, out later this year…”
Ssssspeaking of whi-, ahem, sorry, speaking of which, here’s Nick’s amazing wraparound cover from Megazine 389 – sleep well everyone!
A group shot from the bar at the 2000 AD 40th Anniversary Event last year…
Nick continues “As with all covers, I got the brief from Tharg to have the villain choking Dredd and first thing to deliver is the usual very rough, wonky old sketch which was approved…”
Maul just couldn’t get the top off his Mr Dreddy Bubble Bath.
“Then moving forward to slap on some digital paints and all done and dusted. It was nice have a brief artistic moment away from the undead and Judge Death & co, but hang on….I think I can hear them calling me from the studio now….mussst leave…cannot resissst…………”
Duty and the Beast!
So there we have it, Nick’s handy guide on painting a brilliant cover. Simply do an amazing sketch, then do an incredible painting over the top of it – simple!
HUGE thanks to Nick for taking time out from his busy schedule of painting horrific, nightmare inducing images for us. He is a legend!
Come back tomorrow when the mighty Clint Langley will show us how he created this weeks’ prog cover (plus some EXCLUSIVE images from the Mek Files!) and Phil Winslade paints an angry monkey in braces!