2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Full Tilt Boogie Breaks Out on Alex Ronald’s Cover For Prog 2372
6th March 2024
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!
Borag Thungg Earthlets for another Covers Uncovered – this week we have the return one of Tharg’s cover specialist droids for the cover of Prog 2372 – it’s Alex Ronald with a ghafflebette look at the thrills and dangers to be found in Thrill Tilt Boogie…
Now, Alex has been a dedicated cover art droid for Tharg since he returned to 2000 AD Towers after leaving to start a second career in the computer graphics industry. Before that, he’d been drawing interiors at 2000 AD, getting his break on a Judge Dredd back in Prog 984. More work on Dredd followed, along with runs on Dredd, Vector 13, Rogue Trooper, and Sinister Dexter before he headed off into the sunset. But Tharg has his ways of pulling droids back into the Prog and the Ronald droid was no exception, bringing a very different digital style to his covers ever since!
This is another of Ronald’s Full Tilt Boogie covers for the series written by Alex De Campi and drawn by Eduardo Ocana. It’s glorious space opera stuff, epic & expansive, and packed with action and adventure against some really solid worldbuilding and beautiful art from Ocana to make the whole thing fly.
This second book of the adventures of the good ship Full Tilt Boogie finds our heroes grounded, in need of repairs themselves – although that hasn’t stopped Tee managing to get herself into a hell of a lot of trouble, as you can see from Alex’s fabulous cover, all pulled from the incredible visuals of Eduardo, just like this…
ALEX RONALD: For this cover Matt had asked for a recreation of the scenes with the character trying to break out of the Cryo-chamber. Specifically he wanted it to look like she was breaking out of the Prog cover.
And Alex sent over all the references he was working off, showing just how much trouble Tee had found herself in… this couple below as well as the stunner above!
ALEX RONALD: Although I knew I would have to work close in on this one, working in 3D I built a portion of the tree trunk with the glass canopy as you can see from the reference comic pages.
ALEX RONALD: In the end very little if any of the tree was visible in the final art but It helps me to have all elements there. The 3D figure was posed into position and I partially filled the chamber with a 3D fluid plane.
Once everything was in place I lit it for best effect then spat out the rough render to sketch over.
ALEX RONALD: Once Matt had approved the rough it was onto painting – my favourite part! In the end, I tried to put more fear into the characters face than was in the rough.
Using the 2000 AD logo, I curved it very slightly to follow the contour of the glass and then broke it along the lines of the cracks to try and reinforce the character ‘breaking out’ from the Prog.
I hope you like it.
Oh, we think the readers aren’t going to like it Alex, they’re going to love it!
And hands up how many of us noticed the slight curve of the logo this week? And hands up how many of us are even more impressed with Alex’s cover now we’ve seen it and loved it?
Thanks to Alex for sending all of that over to us – it’s out right now on the shelves of all ghafflebette newsagents and comic shops, as well as the 2000 AD web shop.
As for more from Alex, there’s been plenty of covers uncovered from one of 2000 AD’s modern cover specialists… Prog 2191, Prog 2206, Prog 2255, Prog 2294, Prog 2306, Prog 2353, Prog 2365, and for Megazine 435 and 462.
And finally, just a bit of a blow-up to go close to Alex’s art to really show you the amazing details he gets into the covers, from 3D render to rough through to the finished, on the shelf cover…
