2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Taking Dredd East with Alex Ronald for Prog 2353
11th October 2023
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, as Dredd takes a little work visit to East-Meg Two in the hunt for answers about Hershey’s death in Poison, Alex Ronald returns to the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2353 for a classic Dredd pose set against the backdrop of a city that wants him dead…
So far, Judge Dredd: Poison has seen Dredd off-world and in Mega-City One in his attempt to uncover who it was who infected Hershey with the virus that led to her death and why. Written by Rob Williams and with typically great art from PJ Holden, we’ve now got Dredd deep into East-Meg Two… and that’s never a good thing.
Cover artist Alex Ronald’s time as a 2000 AD art droid is very much a game of two halves. He started off way back in Prog 984 on Judge Dredd, with his first cover coming on Prog 1869. Early work on Dredd, Vector 13, Rogue Trooper, and Sinister Dexter all showed us that he was more than capable of turning in some great-looking art. And then… he was gone, heading off for pastures new. Those pastures had a lot to do with working in the computer graphics industry and 3D modelling, all of which explained why, when he did get pulled back into comics, his art had a very different, very modern, computer-rendered painted style. And it’s that fine style that’s seen him working exclusively for Tharg as a cover art droid ever since, giving us some of the finest covers out there.
So, over to Alex to give you the skinny on putting this one together, all starting, as it often does, with a message from Tharg…
ALEX RONALD: The brief for this cover was “ Dredd facing us holding the rifle, backed with an East-Meg cityscape”
As with most of what I do these days, it all starts with some 3D work to kick off from...
I have a Dredd figure already made which just had to be reposed with the new gun, which I loosely based on the artwork from the story.
The background buildings were also some models that I already had so the only new scratch-built model this time was the gun.
About 20 years ago when I worked in a game studio in Edinburgh the resident concept artist used 3D as a basis to start all his concept paintings and I’ve been hooked on this technique ever since. It’s good for editing your composition quickly and easily and you can light it in various ways to find what works best.
Initially, I went for a full figure shot but felt there was too much flag and not enough Dredd...
Scaling the sketch up to be a lot closer in on the figure felt about right so I redrew the pose again just to tighten up the composition...
Once I had approval to go ahead I painted the final art up over a weekend in July.
As much as possible I try to not make my digital paintings look digital. I tried some new pastel brushes on this one and liked the overall look.
Hope you all like it.
And that’s another great digital cover sorted from Alex Ronald right there. You can find 2000 AD Prog 2353 wherever you pick up you’re the Galaxy’s Greatest, including the 2000 AD web shop from 11 October.
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, and Megazine 435.