2000 AD Covers Uncovered – visualising visions of Deadworld with Dave Kendall
4th December 2020
Every week, 2000 AD brings you the galaxy’s greatest artwork and 2000 AD Covers Uncovered takes you behind-the-scenes with the headline artists responsible for our top cover art – join bloggers Richard Bruton and Pete Wells as they uncover the greatest covers from 2000 AD!
This week, it’s time to join the artist responsible for bringing Deadworld to life, in all its putreying perfection, Dave Kendall, who’s responsible for this absolute stunner of a cover for 2000 AD Prog 2210, out on 2 December –
Yes, the nights are drawing in, making it a perfect time for something spooky and scary – which is exactly what you’re going to get from the latest Deadworld series, Visions of Deadworld, by Kek-W and Dave Kendall. These Visions are new one-off visits to the world where those who do not live rule over all, spreading their contagion across the world, wiping out all life.
We open with a tale of The Boneman, whoever that might be, remembering the world that was and the Deadworld that took its place. But enough from us, let’s just let Dave Kendall, the artist responsible for filling your head with these beautifully grotesque nightmares. Over to Dave –
Dave Kendall: Tharg was running The Bone man tale first. This involved Bone man, whoever he is, exploring the post-genocide of Deadworld. He encounters the Mile high statue of Death made of teeth. A fantastic concept from Kek that nails the sheer scale of the genocide.
The first Stage is rough sketches in what is now the fifth Deadworld Sketchbook. I keep all the Deadworld sketches and ideas in one place so I can easily find reference.
It’s such a big project and this story is the first real-time that Deadworld has been explored so there’s very little already designed. Almost every script requires lots of new designs either in terms of creatures, environments or characters.
I wanted Bone Man, the statue and a representation of the planet to feature. The first cover design involved close-ups of all three, however, at that point, there were lots of images of Dune and cinematic posters out there. That inspired me to produce the second sketch of Boneman towering over The Death statue and city.
A little bit of digital colour and a quick logo placement and I shot them off to Tharg for approval.
He agreed that the cinematic image worked well so that was what we went with.
Next stage is final pencils. It’s a relatively simple case of taking the rough sketch, creating a blue line representation of it and printing it onto Bristol board. I then pencil it in detail.
Those pencils are then scanned, given a sepia tone and printed onto smooth watercolour paper. That’s then mounted and sealed on MDF with matte acrylic medium. It’s basically a liquid PVA substance. When it’s painted over the printed pencils it stops acrylic paint seeping into the paper and dulling down.
The final stage for me is painting in acrylic. I took no photos of the stages for this but, it involved under-painting and careful build-up of mid-tones and shadow with the lightest areas painted last.
Thank you so much to Dave Kendall for opening up the Deadworld to us all! And you can all discover the deathly delightssss of Visions of Deadworld in 2000 AD Prog 2210, out right now!