2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Jake Lynch gives us Sentientoid’s Big Cover for Prog 2297
31st August 2022
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, the return of art droid Jake Lynch for the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2297 – what he’s calling ‘Sentientoid’s Big Cover.’ It’s out whenever you get your Thrill Power on 31 August.
Jake returns not just for the cover, but for the start of the new Judge Dredd adventure, Sentientoid’s Big Idea, written by Rob Williams.
It’s the return of another one of the mercenaries introduced in Judge Dredd: The Hard Way, back in Prog 2250, where we were introduced to this piece of old Sov tech that evolved it’s own AI, became properly sentient and decided to ditch its Sov masters in favour of working for itself – although, as Rob Williams pointed out in the first episode of The Hard Way, ‘I dread to think what the hell it spends its cash on.’
Anyway, onto the cover… Just like he did last time, Jake’s sent over a complete time-lapse video for us all, going through the entire process of putting the cover together, from blank template to final coloured cover… yes, from nothing on the left to absolutely everything on the right, the absolute magic of what artists do!
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We’ve pulled a few screenshots from it to illustrate the process, but it’s still worth a whole minute and a half of your valuable time to see the magic happen in Jake’s video… (if you can’t see it in the embed below – check it out here.)
Yet again, seeing the process unfolding in front of you in time-lapse is something very special, adding even more insight into just how much is involved in creating something like this, from putting rough marks down, adding detail, detail, more detail, painstaking, meticulous, all the way through to adding colours and tweaking it all to get the final image you see on the shelves – fabulous!
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So, now you’ve seen it all put together, a few screenshots from the process video to delight and amaze… all starting with Jake’s first rough sketch idea…
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With that first sketch approved, it onto adding details with the sketch acting as Jake’s template and guide…
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And once those details, essentially inking, are finalised, it’s time to get on with the fiddly, long-winded bits of adding in backgrounds, tonal work, and just generally, as Jake said last time – ‘trying to work out how it will ‘pop’.
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Final stage… adding the colour work, adjustments, alterations, building up the colours layer by layer until it’s all done.
Note as well how all the tight detail of those bodies, something that took so long to do, is sacrificed somewhat to get the right colour balance for the cover – oh, the perfectionism of the artist eh?
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And with that, it’s all done, a Sentientoid triumphant for the cover! Below, some closer details of the work you’ll see on the cover…
Thank you so much to Jake for sending the video over and giving us another look behind the curtain!
For more behind-the-scenes videos and info from Jake, be sure to go and sign up to his Patreon and follow him on Twitter. For more from Jake here at 2000 AD.com, be sure to check out his interviews on The Red Queen’s Gambit (with Arthur Wyatt) and The Hard Way (with Arthur and Rob Williams) and have a look at his last Covers Uncovered here for Judge Dredd Megazine 446 which included another making of video.
You can find 2000 AD Prog 2297 wherever you pick up your weekly prescription of thrill power, including the 2000 AD web shop from 20 July.
