2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Will Simpson Gives You The Hero Pose At High Noon
28th January 2021
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!
Prog 2216, out 27 January, brings us not just the conclusion of Michael Carroll and Will Simpson‘s Judge Dredd: Desperadlands, with Dredd wrapping up his latest Ciudad Barranquilla adventure, but also finishes off with a cracking cover by Will Simpson. This one…
Now, we’ve already had chats with both Mike Carroll and Will Simpson, including seeing plenty of examples of the fully-painted artwork Simpson has produced for the series in a Behind The Art feature. So, quite understandably, with this Covers Uncovered entry, Will simply sent along his process pictures. But, oh, they’re great images!
As far as process goes, Will explained how he does what he does in the interview:
‘I’m still a caveman. I get the charcoal out of my fireplace and after I’ve cooked the wild boar, I mix the fat in with my egg yolks and then…..I pick up my 2B pencil and start scribbling! Pencils, paper, artboard, ink, acrylic, watercolour, gouache and sometimes oil paints, and then after I’ve scanned and pieced together my pages, maybe a little bit of photoshop highlighting, and that’s the art! I’m very old school. I’m in awe of what is done on computer, but I’m better with my tools. It does mean I have lots of physical artwork and a need for great amounts of storage space!!! Other artists could probably do it digitally, but not me. There’s lots of happy accidents creating a page and moving paint around.‘
And putting together this cover was essentially the same process.
Firstly, it’s the planning stage, for which Will came up with two different poses for Dredd, describing it as, ‘The one I thought about doing….and then the pencil of the one I did. More powerful hero angle.’
Here’s idea #1
And now the one that did make the cut, the more powerful hero angle…
As you can see, there’s a fair bit of Western iconography all the way through Simpson’s ideas for the cover, fitting as Desperadlands is effectively Mike Carroll taking the lawman down to the corrupt Western town to sort out the problem, just with a bit of sci-fi and a South American setting.
After the ideas and planning stage, Simpson takes it through loose pencils, to inks, complete with that Simpson splatter!
Next, the painting stage, with Simpson building up his colours as each stage unfolds…
And that’s it. Painting done, it’s all scanned in, cleaned up, maybe a few alterations and then off to Tharg for another cracking Will Simpson cover.
Once more, thanks so much to Will for sending over all these beautiful looking pieces. And remember to check out the interviews with Mike Carroll and Will Simpson, along with the extended look at much of Simpson’s process work from all four parts of Desperadlands.
You can get hold of his Dredd cover for 2000 AD Prog 2216 – and you can pick that up from the 2000 AD web shop from 27 January.