Tag: 2000adcoversuncovered

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 it’s more skin and teeth than Dredd’s going to be comfortable with – all courtesy of one of the best cover droids – Neil Roberts.

As for just why Dredd‘s having a dental disaster, you’ll be wanting to check out End of Days by Rob Williams and Colin MacNeil, when MC-1’s finest faces down the first of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Brit Cit.

Neil’s one of Tharg’s minions who sticks to covers, beautiful, stunning covers you can always see from a mile off. As for how this one came about, it all started with a brief from the Mighty One himself… now, over to Neil for the commentary…

Tharg’s brief was literally that, short and to the point: ‘a shot of Dredd focusing on his chest… pulling open his uniform to reveal a mouth’.

I ran off a few different thumbnails based on the notes and reference materials. The final image chosen was the more abstract concept and hopefully more impactful for it.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to paint Judge Dredd many times and, as a piece of art design in itself, he is so iconic and so ingrained in pop culture, you don’t have to show much to know who it is. With that in mind, I wanted to reduce his presence in the image to its barest essentials whilst still driving home a narrative.

Basically, a classic case of ‘less is more’.

I gathered some reference materials together to refine the pose and anatomy (Do clones have belly buttons? How hairy is Dredd’s chest?). In many ways I wanted the cover itself to feel as if it was physically being opened – designed to look like something beautiful and disgusting at the same time. A little bit of Cronenberg body horror on the bookshelf.

The goal of any cover is to produce an arresting image that makes you want to buy it and/ or read more. With this piece, and all my work, that’s what I’m always striving for.

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Thanks to Neil for giving us that look into the Jaws of Dredd… and clearing up that whole belly button thing.

2000 AD Prog 2189 is available from comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop.

Fancy a little bit more from the Roberts Droid? Of course you do…

A particular favourite of mine from the many, many great covers that Neil’s done over the years… 2000 AD Prog 1665 from 2009… the boys looking damn good here…

Judge Dredd Megazine 326 (2012) – A monstrous Neil Roberts Hondo City cover – and Pete Wells has a great Covers Uncovered for this one here.

2000 AD Prog 1991 (2016) – Dredd going for the whole Barry Sheen vibe – another great Covers Uncovered for this one, courtesy of Pete Wells here.

2000 AD Prog 2014 (2017) – Ritterstahl’s future date not going to plan in this lovely study by Roberts for The Order – Pete’s Covers Uncovered for this one here.

2000 AD Prog 2040 – Neil gets Dredd under wraps in this one from 2017 – and there’s another Petey Covers Uncovered here.

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 it’s the turn of Boo Cook to adorn the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2188 with a The Order cover featuring ye olde Armoured Gideon in a classic naval battle pretty much right out of a Turner painting (and thanks to Boo, you’ll be getting plenty of Turner puns all through this one).

It looks like this…

You’ll have been thrilling to Boo’s most recent artistic delights with the psychedelic Dreddverse tale Blunt III in the Judge Dredd Megazine recently. But his credits for TMO stretch back some 20 years plus now, beginning with Prog 1208 in August 2000, on a Steve Moore penned Future Shock; Home from the War.

So, to get the skinny on the cover, it’s time to Turner this Covers Uncovered over to Boo Cook…

.As this summer marks my twentieth year in the service of Tharg’s mighty organ, I was very pleased to be back on cover duties.

I think Tharg’s initial request for the cover was for the 18th-century version of Armoured Gideon to be firing on an old ship in a Turner-esque naval battle. It took me a few seconds to process that as it’s pretty far removed from what I usually get up to, but I do like getting thrown a curveball now and then.

The painter J.M.W. Turner had previously made quite an impression on me during an A-level art trip to London, so I knew roughly where the cover was heading. Other highlights of that trip included an aubergine fight (not pictured on the cover).

I had a good search for Turner naval battle paintings online and there were plenty to get my juices flowing. Apart from getting a decent angle on the robot, the main problem – I quickly realised – would be finding a balance between ‘full Turner’ and the artistic sensibilities of a modern comic cover. This basically meant making the seascape and ship a little more obvious and slightly less impressionistic so the cover still had a bit of visual clout while hopefully being recognisable as a Turner homage.

So I knocked up that colour rough and sent it off to Tharg and aside from us both agreeing that Gideon needed to obscure a bit less logo it was good to go.

I usually have two approaches to my comic art these days – the traditional ink and photoshop colouring route or the more gritty and expressive heavily tonal pencil and photoshop route, so given the nature of this beast I went for the latter.

In this approach I mostly tend to fill the entire page with heavy graphite but as I knew the sky would be fully photoshop painted I figured it would be a waste of time to go tonal on the sky at the pencil stage and just made sure that rough compositional info was there.

After scanning the pencils in I got stuck straight into the sky – I do love painting a wild sky in photoshop. A good example of the changes I made compared to my usual style is the sun in the background – it’s heavily textured, way more than I would usually paint a sun. In fact, I wouldn’t put any texture on a sun usually but being a Turner tribute I splozzed the paint around a bit (although not to the level of full Turner).

(Yeah – splozzed – Boo tells us it’s a technical term!)

Painting the sea was great fun, again not something I do often but I really enjoyed borrowing some deep tealy greens and translucent wave-tops from the Turner reference.

Once I’d nailed a look for Gideon having scanned various quite different versions of him into my brain I painted him up adding plenty of water splashes and explodey stuff in an attempt to arrive at some semblance of 18th century Pacific Rim style fayre.

As a side note the lazerz were originally going to be orangey fire blasts but they conflicted with the sun too much. FACT.

As is often the case with my artwork, my favourite bit of the painting is completely insignificant and almost unnoticeable – in this case, the unlucky buccaneer draped over a plank of driftwood in the foreground…

Anyway, that’s about the size of it apart from thinking up lots of cover tag lines while I worked such as “TIDE TURNER!” and “TURNER THE CENTURY!” all of which I am very happy to say Tharg did not use…

Thanks to Boo for chatting and showing us his workings out of the cover he eventually Turner-ed in (plus giving this one its title). 2000 AD Prog 2188 is available from comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop.

Now, Turner-ing to a quick bonus cover feature from the Cook Droid…

2000 AD Prog 1500 (2006) with Tharg resplendent…

2000 AD Prog 1532 (2007) with Dredd under the flag of Booth…

Another Joseph Turner inspired cover, this time The Red Seas for 2000 AD Prog 1699:

2000 AD Prog 1817 (2013) – a glorious Ezqueera homage…

2000 AD Prog 1830 (2013)- gloriously old-school going-ons for Gunheadz…

2000 AD Prog 1999 (2006) – Move along cits…

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 year, the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special marks 20 years since the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic joined games developer Rebellion, with a massive 100-page celebration of the last two decades! Inside, you’ll find brand new stories with classic Rebellion-era archive strips – with some special guests cropping up to really make this a true 2000 AD birthday celebration!

And all this under a stunning cover from a 2000 AD legend – Jock! So it’s time to settle down with one of the Rebellion era’s greatest artists and get him to tell us all about the making of a cover worthy of the celebrations!

You can find the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special from all good newsagents and comic book stores on Wednesday 24th June! Or simply pre-order from the 2000 AD web shop using the link below!

PRE-ORDER NOW >>

I always try and fit in doing something for 2000AD if I can, and when Matt asked if I’d like to do the cover for this years Summer Special, I was happy to take it on. 

It also turned out that it would be a ‘bookend’ homage to a Dredd piece I had drawn 20 years ago, marking the anniversary of Rebellion taking over the Galaxies Greatest Comic. 

Matt asked for a shot of Dredd looming over Oxford this time, rather than the London of the first Dreddcon image.

A fairly simple brief, with not too much wiggle room, so I comped together some shots of Oxford for the foreground and drew a quick sketch of Dredd.

I liked the pose, as did Matt, so once approved I blew up the sketch to full size and traced it off to keep the nuances of the way Dredd looked in the final piece.

Worked some more details into the figure and inked it over a couple of days while working on other projects. The final piece is quite large, on 16’ x 20’ art board.I reduced the size of his head slightly in Photoshop before sending the final file, so Dredd would feel as monolithic as possible – Dredd always looks best looking larger than life.

Chris Blythe was the colourist on the original Dreddcon piece and we were lucky to get him for this image too. Matt asked for a daytime scene to contrast the night of the original image, so we get the very apt bright blue skies of Oxford for the Summer Special.

And that’s it – the making of an iconic cover, featuring an iconic character, by an iconic artist. Thanks to Jock once more for taking part. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we see more of his art adorning the covers or pages of 2000 AD or Judge Dredd Megazine.

You can find the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special from all good newsagents and comic book stores on Wednesday 24th June! Or simply pre-order from the 2000 AD web shop using the link below.

PRE-ORDER NOW >>

Now, a little more Jock from the archives…

First off, the cover from the 2012 Free Comic Book Day comic from 2000 AD, as featured by my esteemed colleague, Mr Pete Wells, legend around these parts, on Covers Uncovered from 2011.

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 and the Judge Dredd Megazine!

2000 AD Prog 2184 is out on 3 June, featuring a cover from Steven Austin. He first worked for 2000 AD with Prog 1982, providing the art for a Tharg’s Time Twister – The Timeless Assassin, as written by Rory McConville. Since then, he’s done a couple of Tharg 3Rillers, The House Of Gilded Peak, written by Eddie Robson, and Keeper of Secrets, written by Robert Wilson, and a Black Museum Tale from David Baillie.

Here’s the tale of how this iconic Dredd cover for the Prog came about…

So this cover was a pitch to Tharg. Inspiration comes from the most random of places and the inspiration for this came from a link to a band sent to me by a friend, the band is named Burning Flag, I think I’d probably just been watching some news article on YouTube about the US and Donald Trump and somewhere in that mix the idea for this cover image came to fruition.

I began as always with some very loose doodles, I had an idea that I wanted Dredd in front of a burning US flag but wasn’t sure of composition etc. so went about doodling some options, initially, I envisaged a flag behind Dredd, waving in an apocalyptic wind whilst burning, however, as I went along I started to draw the flag framing Dredd and this stuck.

Once I’d decided upon the design I was going with I went my usual route and drew an A5 rough which I then scanned into PS.

I then blew this up to A3, printed it off and light boxed the rough onto A3 bristol board. Next, it was a case of tightening everything up and making any small changes I decide upon.

Once happy with the final pencils, I begin inking using sizes 2 and 3 series 7 sable brushes with some scribbling at the end with various pens, just to give it a little more edge.

On completing the inks I became concerned that perhaps the colourist wouldn’t realise that the flag should be burning so decided to produce a coloured rough, I printed out the inks, painted over them very quickly in Acrylic and then rescanned it in placing the original inks over the top in Photoshop.

Next, I then decided to go a step further and play around with some digital colours before sending it off to Tharg.

I think the final colours are a very happy medium as to the image and mood I originally envisaged and Quinton Winters’ own excellent interpretation.

As always, thanks to Steven for sharing the making of the cover! Grab 2000 AD Prog 2184 at a newsagent or comic shop near you or from the 2000 AD web store from 3 June.

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!

Available to buy now from the 2000 AD web shop and whichever stores are open, Simon Coleby brings us the third part of The Vigilant saga on the cover and inside the pages of Judge Dredd Megazine 421…

Yes, the stunning saga of Rebellion’s super-team of classic British comic book characters, The Vigilant, comes to a reality-shattering conclusion in the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine #421 with a special 22-page finale. And of course, it’s all under a suitably stunning cover to really mark the end of a stunning series.

Simon was good enough to send over his process images that went to make up that cover. We’re incredibly grateful to Simon for getting this over to us as he’s had what could best be described as a rather busy couple of months, both before and in lockdown. It’s a tale of computer breakdowns, beating a new computer until it did what he wanted, and then a surprise lockdown house move – it’s definitely been a busy, busy time for him! Thankfully, all has settled down a little now and we look forward to seeing whatever is next from one of 2000 AD’s finest artists!

Now, here’s the making of that great Vigilant cover… over to Simon…

And so; the cover for the final chapter in The Vigilant’s tale.

The previous two covers showed the team in heroic, dominant poses. This one had to suggest a moment of peril. Perhaps of defeat. It needed to suggest the questions appropriate to a cliffhanger ending. Will they survive? Will they return? Will the Leopard from Lime Street go back to wearing that leopard-print onesie?

The design of the piece was fairly straightforward – a three-tier composition with the mauled team in the foreground, the looming figure of the demon Mazoul in the midground, dominating the image, and the haunted manor house in the background to provide depth and a sense of scale. And also because who doesn’t love drawing gothic, dark, spooky architecture?

To add to the sense of disorder, I decided to go for a tilted angle – in cinema, known as ‘Dutching’. It’s a technique I find very useful to add interest to my panel compositions. The practise originated in German expressionist film-making, largely being used to convey alienation, madness, disorder and all that kind of fun stuff. For some reason, it seems to work well in my art. Make of that what you will.

Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton both use it to great effect in their movies. You can also see it overused to hilariously awful effect in the Scientology disasterpiece ‘Battlefield Earth.

The idea for the drawing was fairly strong and straightforward from the outset, so I didn’t need to do a huge amount of preliminary work. I did a few rough sketchbook thumbnails, just to sort out the balance of the elements, then I put together a marker rough on A4 paper, which I submitted to Keith in the Nerve Centre for approval.

As usual, I drew the pencils for the finished page on A3 typing paper, starting with a rough blue-pencil drawing, and then refining it with fine-liner marker pens.

I scanned the finished pencil work, then printed it in cyan on A3 Bristol board for inking.

The piece was inked using Rotring Art-Pens, Japanese calligraphy markers, Chinagraph pencils and splatters of ink applied from an old bit of kitchen sponge and flicked from a toothbrush.

After all the mucky stuff with ink, I scanned the image back into Photoshop for a final bit of digital polish.

Len’s colours are superb, as always – a restrained yet strong palette. Warm colours emphasise the foreground, with cooler colours around the haunted manor. The flame colours add drama and impact and also help to ‘pop’ the figure of the demon.

So, that’s that one. We bid farewell to this heroic team. I can only hope that the trivial matter of a global pandemic won’t stop this story finding its way into readers’ hands.

Thank you so much to Simon Coleby for sending the art along.

Now, as a bonus to all you lovely readers – another great bit of Coleby Vigilant artwork – something he put up first on his Facebook… – it’s also a little insight into just what a damn trooper Simon was in getting The Vigilant finished and for taking the time to get the images over to us – he’s had a busy, busy time in lockdown!

A couple of days ago I finished the third ‘Vigilant’ story. That was an ‘interesting’ one — a challenging script, then a dead computer. A new computer which turned out not to be up to scratch, so then another machine and all the fun of sorting out compatible software. Then just for extra chuckles, here comes a global pandemic — having to pack up my studio and unexpectedly move house, mid-job. Never a dull moment, eh? Anyway, with my brilliant collaborators, the job was put to bed with a week to spare — all good and everyone’s happy.

So, for a change and just to chill out I thought I’d do some drawing today. A spec thing I’ve been playing with. Not sure if it’ll get used or how, but I’ve been enjoying bunging it together.

I do love calligraphy when I get a chance to incorporate it in my stuff, so this one has some of John Dee’s occult Latin text, rendered in a lovely Arabic style font. Because why not? Anyway, just a thing that I’ve been playing with, not for any particular reason.

He’s also sent along the skull reference piece…

And then, a few days later…

I’ve been doing proper work today, but also pretty-much finished mucking about with this spec thing. Just going to bung some colours at it, then call it done.

And finally…

So — that piece I was working on for fun a couple of weeks ago. I bunged some colour on it and Tharg’s in-house graphic droids logoed it up.

Yep, like it says – Vigilant – Rapture ends the saga (for now) in Judge Dredd Megazine Issue 421 – out now – get it from the 2000 AD web shop!