2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Welcome Back to The Fall Of Deadworld! Toby Willsmer Covers Prog 2352
4th 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!
For this week’s Prog, it’s the return of Toby Willsmer on the cover AND the return of The Fall of Deadworld by Kek-W and Dave Kendall inside – which is why Toby’s terrifying Judge Fairfax is staring out from the cover…
Toby’s been a pretty regular fixture in and on the Prog for a few years now, ever since winning the Art Stars contest in 2021. An illustrator based in New Zealand, he was a child of Britain in the ’70s and 2000 AD runs in his comics blood.
Since then you’ve seen him grace the cover several times and had his art set your eyeballs pulsing on several strips, including Robo-Hunter in the zombie takeover tale The Darkest Judge, Cadet Dredd in Prog 2325, and a Regened Future Shock in Prog 2346.
But now Tharg’s let him loose once more on a cover and it’s time for him to tell you all about it…
TOBY WILLSMER: Matt asked if would come up with a cover of Judge Fairfax with glowing red eyes, that was creepy and cool looking. I had a few initial ideas and began to scribble in the sketchbook...
I came up with three different ideas for Matt to choose from and he chose number 3.
Next, the rough…
I changed up the pose slightly to give it more movement and gave the background some sort of opening shape that would be the light source flaring into the space the character was in.
Once Matt had OK’d the rough I came up with a proposed colour scheme.
During this stage I had the idea of adding some wall at the top to give a ‘peeking through the wall’ look to it. Matt was a fan of the idea and went with it…
From there it’s my usual route of linework and then adding where I want some basic shadows to go. I kept the background none detailed as I would add in stuff and doodads as I coloured it up.
Then adding in the base colours to work from…
Then onto adding all the good stuff. All the bells, whistles and lighting until it’s finished…
…and here you go the finished cropped version.…
So there you go, thanks so much for Toby to sending that one along – it’s on the shelves wherever you pick up your weekly dose of Thrill Power, including the 2000 AD web shop from 4 October.
You can see his Art Stars winning entry here and there’s more Covers Uncovered from Toby for your pleasure – Prog 2240, Prog 2262, Prog 2269, Prog 2318, and Prog 2332. And you can find out more about him here.