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 another stunning cover by Dylan Teague for Judge Dredd Megazine issue 459, that looks very much like this…

Yes, it’s Dredd out on the streets on Mega-City One, locked and loaded and in a mean mood. Although, thinking about it, when isn’t the city’s finest lawman not in a mean mood?

So, without further ado, here’s how another brilliant Teague cover comes together, all starting with an idea to pitch to Tharg The Mighty. Dylan had this to say…

DYLAN TEAGUE: ‘I know that Tharg can sometimes need a sort of generic Dredd cover, as he features in both mags all the time. I was trying to come up with something quite graphic and after a few failed sketches came up with this as a concept.…

After that initial sketch – which Tharg of course said an emphatic yes to – it was time to get down to the business of getting the cover sorted out.

Back to Dylan again…

DYLAN TEAGUE: From this it was just a case of getting Dredd right and then the background. Dredd always takes me ages to work out, every part of his costume takes a while to get right and then render, eventually got it done and then moved on to the background.

This was a bit more straightforward, though I didn’t manage to keep it quite as graphic as I’d initially envisaged.

Art droids, always finding problems where readers only see brilliance!

All that’s left to show you is how it all came together. First, what Dylan described as ‘getting Dredd right and then the background.’ So it’s a case of building the layers on Dredd bit by bit, just like this…

After that, all that’s left to do is add a few colours and that’s it, another magnificently moody piece of Dredd cover art from the Teague droid.

Okay, okay, adding the colours takes hours and hours to get right – something the Teague droid always does so well…

Thank you so much to Dylan for sending over the artwork – it’s another great cover that you can find on Megazine 459, out on 16 August wherever you get your Thrill Power, including the 2000 AD web shop.

For more from Dylan, and another great study of Dredd, take a look at his Covers Uncovered piece for Prog 2236.

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 sees the return of Ken Niemand and Tom Foster for Judge Dredd: A Fallen Man, the third part of their trilogy following former Judge Kyle Asher, freshly returned from his 20 years on Titan for beating a citizen to death and now working as an auxiliary. It follows A Penitent Man (Progs 2225-2230) and An Honest Man (Progs 2281-2286) and something tells us it’s just not going to end too well for poor Kyle. Not if Dredd’s got anything to do with it.

To mark the start of the third and final part of the trilogy, we get to welcome back Tom Foster to the cover of Prog 2341 with a fabulous Dredd image – although, as you’ll discover, he’s got issues with it…

TOM FOSTER: Alright, I’ll level with you. At the time of writing, I’m just over halfway through the third-to-last chapter of this story. By the time you read this I should be (if all goes according to plan) a few days into drawing the penultimate part – and part one will already be on newsagents’ shelves and in the hands of whichever subscribers are fortunate enough to live in a district with a prompt postal service.

So, if this ‘Covers Uncovered’ has an air of desperation about it, it’s because this droid is currently gears-deep in the process of trying to get it all finished in time for the solemn and immutable deadline, the spectre that haunts a comic book artist’s dreams like a sleep paralysis demon.

Those familiar with my working methods, or even just my general essence, may have good cause to suspect that this frenzied dash to the finish is the result of poor time-management and fecklessness. For once though, I’m happy to say this is not the case. But, whatever the root cause, the implications are the same: I am racing face-to-face with my own doom and we are about to smash into each other in a cataclysm of blood and zygomatic arches.

But sure, let’s use up a chunk of my remaining time to go over the process for the cover of Prog 2341.

First of all, let’s be clear on one point – this cover has problems. Some of those problems are the result of logical sacrifices in service of the concept and some are the result of my own surfeit of limitations and ignorance, but problems they remain – and the biggest, by some measure, is wideness.

Judge Dredd is too wide. His face is too wide. His helmet is too wide. His whole vibe is too wide.

To understand this overabundance of width it is necessary to journey back to the beginning, when I was just a fledgling Prog 2341 cover artist, starting out on my journey to make the cover for Prog 2341, with nothing but hope in my heart and a bagful of dreams.

As is the custom, I started with a layout sketch. Here, I was presented with my first problem. This is a Dredd story – Dredd being on the cover is generally a plus here – but Tharg also likes covers to reflect the actual chapter of the story that they are to accompany. So, what does Dredd do in this chapter? He stands and looks at a screen.

‘Hang on though’, I thought to myself ‘if I show the action on-screen reflected in Dredd’s visor, it’ll create the suggestion of Dredd’s involvement and foreshadow any confrontation to come later in the story’. It seemed like an excellent idea.

Then I realised just how narrow those bits of Dredd’s visor that he looks out of are. ‘No problem,’ I thought ‘I’ll just fudge the proportions a bit.’

Little did I suspect that that fudging would come back to fudge me in turn. Fudge me something rotten.

I rushed through the layout, a hanging offence, with the rationale that I’d drawn Dredd’s head a million times, so there was really no need to over-prepare. Idiot.

I based the whole composition around using Dredd’s helmet as a design element that didn’t really have to correspond to functional reality. But then, of course, I still wanted it to look convincing and to have Dredd’s whole chin in shot, so a certain amount of proportional shenanigans was necessary to have the visor take up the requisite amount of active space to have a nice clear shot of our stealth gunman reflected therein.

With the penciling stage, I started to notice some irregularities. The neck seemed wrong, springing up out of his body like one of He-Man’s buddies. The whole head seemed alien-like and unconvincing. ‘No problem’, I continued to think, ‘I’ll fix it in Photoshop before I ink it.’

A whopping great fudging was now lumbering inexorably in my direction.

I did my best to mitigate the damage and then printed out the pencils for inking. This stage went not too bad. I used a smaller brush for the figure in the visor and a bigger one for Dredd, just to give some sense of scale (a Winsor & Newton 7 Series size 0 for the figure and size 2 for Dredd, for all you brush-heads out there).

Then, again, I tried to compensate for the flatness in the image engendered by poor proportion, by really highlighting the middle of Dredd’s face and darkening out the outer edges of it.

While this worked in part, there’s only so much dimension you can add this way. I only really fully realised my folly the day after I’d finished the colours.

Seeing a thumbnail-sized preview of the image on my desktop, I was suddenly struck by how wrong it looked, how much like a mid-late 90’s abomination of horrible superhero anatomy and colour gradients.

You can simulate this process now yourself by standing up the cover on a shelf in front of you and slowly stepping backwards away from it. You’ll see all the nuance disappear – all the seemingly-aligned elements of facial anatomy giving way to a snarling, two-dimensional monstrosity that even Rob Liefeld would have humanely euthanised on the spot.

Like all intelligent people, I keep a skull around the house – for contemplative and instructional purposes. As any good skull should, it provided a chilling portent of the error of my ways. I noticed that, when viewed from the front, the jaw is really only about two ‘mouths’ wide. One in the middle (obviously) and roughly one half on either side. No doubt this was covered in one of my many anatomy books, but my youthful abandon conditioned me to ignore it.

Even with someone like Dredd, whose mandible often suggests a state of medical emergency, there’s only so much you can stretch these proportions before things start to look prohibitively unrealistic, particularly if you show his full array of pearly whites (as I had), betraying the underlying anatomy to the viewer.

So it was that I realised that, not only had I made this mistake here, but in a hundred other drawings, some contained within this very issue.

Fortunately, this process was an instructional one that has now informed the way I think about all faces and my work has improved as a result, but it came at a cost.

The thumbnail of this cover still haunts me and I can offer no better advice to budding artists than to consult this verse I’ve composed on the subject:

“If plagued by troubled doubt you be,
when drawing head anatomy,
consult the skull upon your shelf,
’tis wiser counsel than yourself.”

And we will leave poor art droid Foster there – the art droids really do beat themselves up over things when they think something’s wrong. Thanks to Tom for opening up to us – it’s almost a form of therapy sometimes!

You can find 2000 AD Prog 2341 wherever you pick up the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, including the 2000 AD web shop from 19 July.

For more from Tom here at 2000AD.com, check out his Covers Uncovered features for 2000 AD Progs 1986, 2225, 2281, and 2310, his great Storm Warning cover for Megazine issue 450 and his just as great Surfer cover for Megazine issue 454. We’ve also interviewed him a couple of times – he talks about his 2013 Thought Bubble talent search win here and the Judge Dredd: A Penitent Man strip here. Finally, if you want to see and hear him, there’s his 2000 AD Thrill-Cast Lockdown Tapes appearance here and his far too funny From The Drawing Board video can be found here.

And as a special bonus for you, here’s the first three pages of Tom’s great artwork on the first episode of A Fallen Man… starting in Prog 2341…

Oh, and if you’re wondering why Tom’s labeled the cover ‘After Romita Sr’, well that would be because he’s homaging the classic John Romita Sr cover to Amazing Spider-Man #55 (Marvel Comics, 1967)… although, as he said to me when I enquired, ‘I know the composition’s a little different (it could just as easily be seen as an homage to Bolland’s cover for prog 161), but that Doc Ock over was definitely the more prominent in my mind while I was working on this one, so it just seemed appropriate to acknowledge it.’

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!

The latest Judge Dredd Megazine, issue 458, comes out 19 July – you can’t miss it, it’s got another stunning Nick Percival cover to mark the finale of the Dark Judges saga (for now at least) as Death Metal Planet comes to an end.

Nick’s art has graced the pages of the Megazine for nearly 400 pages of Dark Judges action. But all good things, as they say, must come to an end, even Judge Death.

But although Nick’s bidding farewell to Judge Death, we’ll be seeing him very soon with another Judge – but we’ll let him fill you in on that as he talks Megazine 458…

NICK PERCIVAL: “Here we go! – The final part of Death Metal Planet. It’s the end of the gig with no encore for Judges Death, Fear, Mortis and Fire.

It’s probably no surprise that things don’t end well for Death and the gang (do they ever?) and the cover image certainly shows that everything’s NOT coming up Milhouse for him.

It was actually Tharg’s cool idea to go with an image that would show Death vaporised from the intense power of Rosco in her Judge Light mode.

I wanted a full on, ‘there’s no coming back from this’ feel to the pic with a nice cosmic look.

I tweaked the image a little from the original sketch, just to make it clear it was Judge Death that was being destroyed and decided to go with a simple high-contrast colour palette to keep all the emphasis on the core image.

It’s been a fun and to be honest, quite a strange series to conclude my time (for now) on the Dark Judges after nearly 400 painted pages working on the characters with top writers, John Wagner and David Hine where I got to illustrate all manner of dark, weird and sometimes wacky stuff.

I’m back on Judge Dredd now with a little peek at something cool coming in the September Megazine and then a top secret, very dark Dredd epic for 2000AD that makes ‘Se7en’ look like Play School  –  say no more.

And as for the Dark Judges – Surely they can’t come back from this? (Although, I do have a couple of ideassss….)”

And thanks to Nick, we have a sneak peek of his next Dredd… just hope the Percival droid’s cleared this one with Tharg or we’re both in big trouble!

But remember, although this might be the end of Death Metal Planet – it’s not going to be the end for the Dark Judges and Judge Death. After all, ‘you cannot kill what does not live!’

Thanks so much to Nick for sending his cover process and that sneak peek of his work on Judge Dredd. As always, it’s grotesquely beautiful work from an art droid that never fails to impress.

You can get hold of Judge Dredd Megazine 458 wherever the Galaxy’s Greatest are sold, including the 2000 AD web shop from 19 July.

If you’re in the mood for more of Nick’s Covers Uncovered work, be sure to have a look at these – Prog 2247, Megazine 427, Megazine 430, Megazine 443, Megazine 448, and Megazine 453.

But before we go, just one last look at Nick’s version of Judge Death and Roscoe…

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 time to dive into the latest new 2000 AD Special – and what a special Special it is… it’s fresh, it’s new, it’s a vision of a future that you’ve not seen before, it’s Mega-City Max! And we’re taking a look behind the scenes with cover artist Priscilla Bampoh.

Mega-City Max is brand-new, fresh as you can get comics, max-ed out 2000 AD thrills for a new generation. It features cutting-edge comic talent and their versions of classic 2000 AD characters, including DeMarco, Devlin Waugh, Harlem Heroes, and Walter the Wobot, Dredd’s one-time house robot. With all-new stories for an all-new teen readership, Mega-City Max features some of the hottest breaking talent in comics, including Lucie Ebrey, VV Glass, Hannah Templer, Ramzee, Oliver Gerlach, Korinna Mei Veropoulou, and Roger Langridge.

And of course, right there on the cover to Mega-City Max we have Priscilla Bampoh, who’s about to tell us all about putting this one together…

PRISCILLA BAMPOH: I think the biggest challenge making this piece was the background, designing the city itself.

SK Moose’s spread art for 2000 AD Prog 2179 was one of the inspirations for the building designs and figuring out how to design a wraparound comic book cover as it was new territory for me.

Pris is talking about this one from Stewart… and you can find the Covers Uncovered piece for that here.

PB: A lot of the focus was designing an interesting setting, making sure there was little to no similar designs and that something was going on.

With the background sorted, I got to move on to my favourite part! The characters given were meant to be styled like they were going out together, roaming about in the big city.

The brief requested Gem, Devlin, and De Marco to be the main characters they wanted to fit onto the front cover, and that was a huge plus; they look like the type of characters I would want to work with for other projects. I managed to fit Walter in the front cover to avoid any empty space.

The moment I got the references for the characters, I had an immediate idea of what type of look I’d imagined they wear. Gem, for example, I imagined a retro bomber jacket, while someone like Devlin, who at first glance look insufferably pompous, would probably keep the more ‘smart’ look.

Now, the three stages of putting the cover together – from Pris’ initial rough through to the finished art ready to throw the colours onto…

PB: The goal was to make a “fun, vibrant” setting, and you see that most with the colours.

Here’s the initial colour palette; I like working with a lot of reds and would use that as the sunset.

The final piece matches the colours used for the cover, plus I had to remove the badge from De Marco’s coat.

I think an improvement I would make would be to make the characters feel less static; make them look like they were actually roaming around the city that surrounds them as opposed to just standing.

Thank you so much to Priscilla Bampoh for sending that one along – especially as she was snowed under with University stuff! Yes, all that absolute brilliant art and she’s still incredibly young! What an incredible talent!

You can find her stunning artwork on the cover of Mega-City Max – out on 19 July from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop..

Pris is a brilliant young artist and comic artist with an incredible future. You can see more of her work at her website, you should follow on Twitter, and all the other relevant links are at her Linktr.ee.

Right, time for bigger versions of the art you’ve seen, just because we can and it’s so great to see… the front and the back versions of rough, ‘pencils’, ‘inks’, and both colours. And after that, more of Pris’ great artwork to make you drool!

And now, just to give you some idea of what her work is all about, as if the fabulous Mega-City Max cover didn’t give you enough, here’s just a sampling of just how good Priscilla Bampoh is…

First of all, the only time we’ve chatted to Pris, albeit only briefly, was with the interview series for the 45 Years of 2000 AD Art Book, where she gave us this wonderful interpretation of Venus Bluegenes, saying this…

‘The character I got to draw was Venus Blugenes. In the art, I had the character all bloodied looking tired and in pain. I was basically just thinking what’s the best way to make her look as intimidating as possible.

I had her coming out of what looks like a huge wreckage in a jungle, kind of a way to show her strength and resilience. I look at images of Venus, and I’m like-WOW she’s fierce and deadly, she’s sort of the type of woman I try to replicate with my original characters nowadays.

The last 2000 AD character I made an illustration of was Durham Red, who was a joy to draw, but I feel like I play to my strengths as an artist more with Venus, especially with the colours. I’m not going to lie, I was unfamiliar with the character since I’m still very new to the 2000AD series, so I don’t have a huge attachment, but I wouldn’t hesitate to draw Venus again given the chance.

And then there’s this absolutely wonderful selection of Pris’ art from her website…

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, more wraparound madness from Stewart Kenneth Moore. It’s always a wonderful experience to get into the mind of this particularly great artist. And Stewart certainly didn’t let us down here on the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2340, out Wednesday 12 July.

Stewart’s cover is all part of the launch of the brand-new seven-part strip Portals & Black Goo, a great new comedy-horror from the wonderfully twisted minds of John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney.

Portals & Black Goo is all about a London where monsters live amongst us and asks the question: what happens when the monsters get hungry and fancy a bite? Well here’s where Devouroo comes in – ‘We Deliver… You Devour’. Whether it’s bags of fresh plasma for vampires, bloody bones for djinn, or steaming viscera for werewolves, the put upon scooter riders of Devouroo will bring it to you. A satirical look at the world in the finest traditions of 2000 AD, Portals & Black Goo takes swipes at modern working conditions, the nightmarish world of zero-hour contracts, and the prejudices faced by all marginalised groups in society.

It’s another brilliant new strip for you in 2000 AD, all wrapped in a spectacularly good cover from SK Moore. As before, Stewart’s sent along videos of his process to fascinate and amaze you all and we’ve grabbed screenshots from the videos to illustrate what he’s talking about.  

And for fans of SK Moore’s art – yep, that’s all of you – be sure to check out the latest Judge Dredd Megazine, issue 458, out on 19 July, where he illustrates another great Ian Edginton written Judge Dredd: Ratings War. There’s a sneak peek of that at the end of this particular deep dive into this latest SK Moore cover.

So, shall we begin this look at the complete wrapround to Stewart’s Portals & Black Goo cover – oooh, get a load of this.

And now, over to Stewart for this latest, rather fabulous, Covers Uncovered…

SK MOORE: There are shedloads of art tutorials for artists online. Some of what I share here verges on technique but mostly it’s like a diary entry about the mental process, getting on with it, sticking with it and where ‘it’ comes from. If you are a budding comic artist I’ve listed some books below that I think are very helpful.

I relished this assignment, I’d just finished duties on Project MKUltra: The Complete Edition (out from Clover Press in Sept 2023) and found myself propelled forward into the work void with pen in hand and absolutely nothing on my desk.

An open road is exhilarating and terrifying. What’s next? A skill no one teaches in art books – How do you keep the work coming in while not being so busy that you can’t take on more work? That’s an art skill!

This cover offered real licence to generate numerous freaks and weirdoes – and freaks and weirdoes are my bread and butter. People are strange and learning there was to be a new story coming to 2000AD, set in an area populated by monstrous freaks, wasn’t in the least bit surprising, Jim Morrison was right – people are strange.

And just to prove that – Stewart sent along a few pieces from his sketchbook – some beautiful things that we’ll show you later, but this pair, ‘Sex Tourist’ and ‘Bucolic Alcoholic’ definitely fit under Stewart’s point of people are strange…

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SKM: The new story is Portals and Black Goo by John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney. Tharg commissioned the cover early and Eoin was kind enough to share some character sketches. These included the ‘DEVOUROO’ logo, delivery rider, and a fearsome werewolf (who looked not too pleased with his delivery!).

There was also a vampire that reminded me of Joan Jett. I liked her right away, she was gonna be great to draw.

Tharg gave me my lead too and I think it went something like this:

‘The DEVOUROO delivery rider has just warped through a portal to arrive in the street. He is immediately hitting the brakes to avoid colliding with the monstrous pedestrians’ (we’ve all met them!).

I’m pretty sure that was basically Tharg’s lead, at least I think that was what he said. 

Tharg liked the sketch I sent over and now I just had to work-up the various weirdos milling in the street. Freaks and weirdoes are much easier to draw than flowers in vases and not only because they are entertaining – but because flowers are perfect and beautiful and perfect and beautiful things are hard to draw.  

Any mistake in drawing a flower or vase and it will be obvious to all that you have screwed up. Make a mistake with a freak, on the other hand, and it’s your keycard to freak-town. Errors only deepen the weirdness.

I realised recently that I’ve worked almost exclusively on wraparound covers and double-page spreads for 2000AD since 2019. I have a single-page cover coming up, but the one after that will be a wraparound. I love the challenge of a wraparound because the composition has to appeal in two formats, portrait on the front and landscape in whole.

My colouring instinct was a limited palette of red, black and white with some pinks (tints of red). This was a typical graphic style for budget horror in old film and theatre posters back when each additional colour cost money. The less colour you used the cheaper the print run would be.

I think Shaun of the Dead used the same colours in their poster and for the very same reason, they were pointing to classic horror, just as I do here.

I recently did it in a cruder way, on the cover of The Tragedie of Macbeth, my Shakespeare comic adaptation of ‘The Scottish Play’ – red, black and white, a powerful graphic combination for horror. 

I got the model of the motorbike from Eoin and found some good photo references. The colours of the Devouroo logo hadn’t been decided yet (it was early in the game!). So my colour scheme worked here too because the picture is essentially a red-tinted black-and-white world, so the livery can be black and white or any colour in the story that Eoin or his colourist might settle on.

[The colourist is Jim Boswell and he’s done a stunning job!]

I thought about the old Hovis TV advert directed by Ridley Scott in which a delivery boy pushes his bike up a steep hill of terraced houses. I looked online to find terraced houses in East London. I screenshot some and drew the background.

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I always try and include a brain in a jar If I have the opportunity. They are a classic sci-fi trope that somehow always amuses me.

One of the worst films ever made is pretty much a brain in a jar film, it’s called ‘They Saved Hitler’s Brain’ and it’s absolutely atrocious, and oddly dull for such a startling title. But the bits featuring Hitler are amusing. Anyway, if you don’t know it, let me save you the tedium, here are the highlights...

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AND NOW…DIGITAL INKING

If you are curious about digital inking, here’s the thing, there’s no button that does it for you. AI is a different matter, AI images are generated by machines and it shows because they are horribly soulless things. For now, at least.

I draw and ink in Manga Studio (Now called CLIP STUDIO PAINT) and I paint in Photoshop. But I use the same skills I learned on paper, there’s no shortcut. The Draw Curve tool, for example, replaces the French Curve. The various ink tools replace sable brushes and Rotring pens. It is faster and cheaper and you can’t beat that. The computer also combines several tools, it’s a lightbox and an encyclopaedia, all my brushes are where they should be and I never need to clean them.

Nevertheless, I’m moving back to a traditional media. There’s a bunch of things I don’t like about digital and it’s bugging me. Primarily I want there to be an artefact behind the printed page. I’m an artist and I want to make things. I want to leave images behind me that can’t be simply ‘switched off’.

Makes you lazy too, or it has me. It takes a more disciplined artist to maintain traditional tools, it is also much more expensive, this is why digital art wins the day. Sadly, that means the world of comic art (and you!) lose because there’s not as much tradable art on the market. Under the circumstances, ‘going that extra mile’, is simply unaffordable to many comic book artists. 

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A BRAIN IN A JAR WITH CRABS LEGS AND MALE & FEMALE HANDS

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I greyed out the rough and began a new layer over it and began refining that layer. It was mostly rubbish at this stage. But the fly-headed ‘flasher’ guy with the raincoat looked ok and so did the guy with the ‘cushion face’. Although ‘Fly Head, The Flasher’ had a detailed face with proboscis I accidentally filled in his head with the paint bucket tool. I saw right away it was better in shadow. I learned a long time ago that embracing happy accidents is a good idea, so I didn’t ‘undo’ it and kept it that way, no more proboscis!

After loads of re-attempts I finally had a better rough that I felt I could really ink the hell out of! I flatted it all on one layer and made it blue for inking. 

If you are working on paper you should consider blue pencil – if you intend to ink, anyway. If you draw comics in pencil, that’s cool, for pencil or paint, that’s fine. But why do that if you are planning on inking? I never understand the trouble artists go to only to rub out the pencil after inking. Don’t do it. It’s bad, a waste of time, and you threaten to damage all that fine inking! What are you, crazy? Get the blue pencil, no rubbing out. Camera can’t see it….and blue pencil looks great. It just does.

This video begins with me inking the brain. Uplighting is another classic horror trope, I’m uplighting the brain here. At some point you’ll see I begin inking hands without any pencil sketch. This usually happens after I’ve built up a head of steam, after I’ve warmed up so to speak, I go a bit freestyle.

I’m using symmetry rulers here and there, perfect for machines. With organics I think you should always re-work the symmetry, asymmetrically, after dropping the ruler. A lot of artists don’t bother and it always shows. Once you see it you can’t un-see it. So I always adjust symmetries in organics, I undo a bit of the facial symmetry for example. But machines can be totally symmetrical.

You’ll see I draw two hands, both tough-looking male hands to begin with, but then I delete one. Learning to be able to draw hands from any angle is vital and a great learning aid for any comic artist. Best thing to practice IMO. I suddenly realised how much more interesting it would be if the other hand was refined, feminine, bejewelled, like this crab-legged Brain in a Jar was assembled from spare parts.

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CRAB LEGS

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Here I’m using a mix of free-hand inking with the G brush and line with the ‘draw curve’ tool. On paper that would be a sable brush and mapping pen, Rotring pen on Bristol board. The ‘greying’ out of under layers is just like using a lightbox. Same thing.

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THE ‘WAITER’ AND TENTACLES

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The sketch for the figure in this case is very rudimentary. If I were drawing a principle character I’d likely have a strong sketch to work over. But this guy, I’ll call him ‘The Waiter’, is a one-off, so I can wing it and make him up as I go. Again, he is largely uplit, so I’m flaring the line on the upside, placing the shadow on top of his nose. I like the flare of the brush line, a mechanical line is more popular today.

With digital, as you can see, I can add characters to background fairly easily and later delete the overlap to push them back. Again, I’m working back and forth with a mix of free hand brushing and Curve Tool. 

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FUR, EYEBALLS, BLOBS, SUSPICIOUS LUMPS

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Using the same free-hand line you’ll see here I create a velvet-like texture for the blob surface and hair on the beast-man, same brush and same size, just a different motion of the hand. Incidentally, the beast man is based on a friend of mine (he’s not so beastly). I always like to draw one real person into my comics. Not sure why, perhaps because it anchors me to at least one image from the real world. Not so much here, once I made him up, Kevin all but disappeared under my ‘make-up’.

You’ll also see a kind of spider-teddy boy character here. I thought of that because when I was a kid, and punk was the thing back then, you’d still see some Ted’s knocking about, in their heavy coats and blue suits, DA’s, felt collars, the works. They seem to have died out now. Global warming maybe.

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PH’NGLUI MGLW’NAFH CTHULHU R’LYEH WGAH’NAGL FHTAGN AND THAT

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I start with the energy line of the portal. I know this will be painted as though it’s a hot gas or crackling lightning, so a thin line is best here. In the layers menu (I always have way too many layers! You don’t need that many) you’ll see blue squares. These are my blue pencil sketch layers.

The yellow and black coloured boxes are my photo references, in this case limited to terraced houses, the motorbike, and my actor friend’s beastly gurnings (the gurnings are, admittedly, rather beastly). Kevin sent me snaps following from a character doodle I sent him, his photos were great and I may do some other drawings from them, they were really very dramatic. But he’s an actor, so whad’ya expect?

In drawing the eyes of the Cthulhu-esque creature I used the circle tool and a symmetry ruler that mirrors your line in 6 or so places. Instant iris!  See, told you digital was faster! But the rulers are seductive, so my advice is to be sparing with them. They’ll show you up if you don’t watch out. The rest of the beastie is drawn freehand, so I’m just inking and winging it mostly. But being technical with an eyeball can really sell that eyeball…and the eyes are the route to viewer engagement in many cases.

Shading the eyeball, I switch between black and white to cross hatch. In traditional media I’d use white ink here, or if it were on scraperboard I’d use a black pen over the white ‘scrape’ lines.

Colouring-wise, again, I look to old printing techniques where flat colour was cheaper than ‘continuous tone’. It points to comics of old and, again, classic poster design. So I try and use just flat colours…mostly.

After inking is complete I export the ink layer to Photoshop with a high-resolution of 300 dpi or 720 dpi, these are print resolution. Computer screen res would be 72 dpi and that would look terrible if printed, a higher res is needed for paper. In Photoshop I make the ink my top layer and apply colour to a layer beneath it.

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EXPLORING FINAL COVER DETAILS

Next time I’ll go into more detail about colouring. Actually, next time I’m doing an oil painting, a scene featuring Judge Dredd and painted on canvas in OG traditional methods. I can’t show anything yet, but keep an eye on Covers Uncovered if you’d like to see how that painting happens. And if you are an AI ‘bot’ artist, go suck a duck. 

Recommended reading – Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Hands by Burne Hogarth. I learned to draw hands and feet here. Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner, and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.

And that, I think you’ll agree, is a rather brilliant Covers Uncovered from Stewart! Make sure you go through all those videos, the detailing is incredible, really opening up the mystery of just how it’s all done.

Now, both parts of the cover in all their glory for you to drool over…

You can find Stewart’s wonderful cover to 2000 AD Prog 2340 wherever you pick up your weekly dose of Ghafflebette comics, including the 2000 AD web shop from 12 July.

If you want to see more and read more from Stewart, you can go salivate at his Covers Uncovered pieces for the 2000 AD Encyclopaedia, Prog 2179, Prog 2239, and Megazine 440, and the sort-of Covers Uncovered for his very special poster in the 2020 Sci-Fi Special here. Then there’s with Stewart here for the 2022 Judge Dredd: Ascension Day strip.

You can (and should) follow him on Twitter and Instagram, see what he does here at Lambiek, and buy all his works including The Tragedie Of Macbeth and the quite magnificently wonderful and completely out there MK-Ultra: Sex, Drugs & The CIA – the collection comes out in Sept 2023 from Clover Press but they still have copies of Volume 1 and Volume 2. It’s a blistering look at one of the most secretive and controversial government experiments in history, the tale of the CIA’s mind control program and its use of hallucinogenics, and is a stunning work of comics gazing deep into the dark side of US intelligence.

And now, as promised, more from Stewart and more from Portals & Black Goo… first of all, some of those amazing wrapround covers…

And then the rest of the sketches he sent along…

Next up, remember I told you about the new Judge Dredd story by Ian Edginton that Stewart’s drawing. It’s called Ratings War and it’s coming in the new Judge Dredd Megazine, issue 458, out on 19 July. And here’s that preview we promised you…

And finally, seeing as this cover is all about John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney’s new strip Portals & Black Goo… here’s the first three pages of what looks like another one of Tharg’s best…

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!

Another video contribution from Dredd artist Jake Lynch now, who took up the artistic duties on the latest of Mike Carroll‘s Dredd tales – In The Event Of My Unlikely Demise, taking over from Paul Marshall in Prog 2338.

And it’s another great Lynch Dredd there on the cover of Prog 2339, which is out now –  under fire and ready to unleash justice on the mobs of MC-1.

I say it every time we see one of these time-lapse videos from the Lynch-droid, it’s so amazing for non-artists like us to actually get that glimpse behind the curtains and see the magic happening. Seeing it all unfold in front of us – why, you can practically hear the Lynch-droid weeping as he adds more and more detail with every meticulous step he takes.

Here’s the entire thing, the video of Lynch’s time-lapse that shows you just what it takes to put a great looking – and damn, that’s a great looking – 2000 AD cover together.

But now you’ve seen all that, let’s break it down a little with the aid of a few screenshots…

It starts with the Lynch-droid sitting in front of his arch nemesis, a blank screen. He stares at the blank screen for the longest time, wondering quite how to start. Then he realises it’s probably a good idea to turn the damn thing on first.

Once that step’s taken, this digital-only droid is off and running. First up, we have Lynch’s thumbnails for this one, a simple Dredd under fire, with and without bullets…

Now comes the pants-wetting stage, the send it over to Tharg and see what sort of mood TMO is in today. As Lynch has told you before, this one’s tricky, as Tharg is always, always angry and this step often involves a Rigellian Hotshot or two.

Thankfully for Jake, this one thumbnail image he sent over got the okay and, wiping away tears of joy and glad there were no toilet accidents this time, the Lynch-droid sets to work.

With that thumbnail image approved, it’s transferred to the full-sized template page, where grey wash and inking details are started. As Lynch works completely digitally, it’s not a case of pencils then inks, more a building up of digital detailing and form…

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To firm up the background details and make sure it’s all working – time to add in those perspective lines.

Now comes what Lynch has previously described as ‘trying to work out how it will ‘pop’.

Although looking at just how painstaking it all is, this adding of background details, more tones, shadows, more inks, more inks, more inks, more inks… we would imagine Lynch said that through a wet mess of tears and sweat.

And then of course there’s all the little essential details that have to be added in, filling in the badge, adding in the chain, that sort of thing, all of it on painstaking layers.

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So, by now the Lynch-droid is in pieces, the constant pressure from Tharg demanding to know where the cover is has taken its toll.

But after more tinkering and more detailing, a moment of joy, after the poor artist has nearly gone insane with the little touches, the close work, the stuff that they know most people might not notice is there but just makes the whole thing so much better, it’s finally done and finished…

Once the elation dies down, the realisation sets in that, no, that’s not it – there’s the damn colours to add now. No doubt Lynch curses the heavens for deciding he was going to colour his own covers. It happens every single time you know. These droids and their faulty memory circuits.

So, now comes the equally painstaking process of adding in the digital paints, stage after stage of adding colours, adjusting colours, trying one thing and then another to see what works best. Or, as Lynch has told us in previous Covers Uncovered pieces, ‘I wish it was as simple as just ‘washing’ colour over the toned artwork (though that is the starting point) – it’s a little more long-winded and often feels like reworking the whole pic over again, hardening it out.’

First steps, get the main colours in and see what it looks like.

Now, tinkering and tinkering and tinkering with it all… tones, background colours and shadows, the small bits of added colour. More messages from Tharg, more weeping from the Lynch-droid. It takes an age of course but every single step adds and adds value to the overall piece…

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And then, after days of this stuff, the artist sits back once more, exhausted, back aching, fingers aching, looking at the final version.

The tears well up again. First, it’s with the relief of knowing it’s done, but then those tears of relief change to tears of dread – all the Lynch-droid has to do now is summon up the courage to send it to Tharg!!!

As usual with Jake Lynch’s video Covers Uncovered, a wonderful, insightful look at just how much goes into every single cover for Tharg’s mighty organ. Thank you to Jake for sending it along – hopefully, he’ll be recovered enough from the whole experience to do another one sometime soon?

You can find Jake’s Dredd under fire cover out on the shelves of your local newsagents and comic shop, not to mention from the 2000 AD web shop from 5 July.

There’s plenty more of Lynch’s excellent Covers Uncovered available – for Progs 2017 , 2172, 2181, 2203, and 2297, plus Megazine 446. And be sure to have a look at a trio of great interviews with Jake – The Red Queen’s Gambit (with Arthur Wyatt) and The Hard Way (with Arthur and Rob Williams), and then there’s talk of Dredd, Y-fronts, and more to do with his wonderfully daft Dredd & Zombo strip, The Immigrant, in the 2020 Sci-Fi Special.

Finally, 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.

Now, just a few big blow-ups of the final detail you can see in Jake’s finished cover… head to wonderful boots… what a Dredd!

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 sees something very special, as Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Lt. Blueberry, and Nevada artist Colin Wilson returns to cover the penultimate episode of Garth Ennis and Patrick Goddard‘s Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley. It was an honour to speak to this legendary comics artist, one of the few artists in the world who’ve had incredible success in the UK, Europe, and the USA.

A native New Zealander, Colin Wilson moved to London in 1980 for work at 2000 AD. And although not perhaps technically legal – he’ll fill you in on that himself – his work on Judge Dredd and then Rogue Trooper, the latter alongside the other great Rogue artist of the time, Dave Gibbons, brought his Euro-influence stylings and dystopian techno-futurism to the comic and absolutely cpativated the fans.

He may have only been at 2000 AD in the 80s for a brief time, but his work, from Judge Dredd: The Sweet Taste of Justice in the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1981 to Rogue Trooper: Marauders in Progs 282-289 in 1982 will always be a huge part of 2000 AD history. And, like he proudly (and rightly!) tells you, he’s now been in 2000 AD in every decade from the 80s – very few can say that!

After decamping to Paris, Wilson eventually – again, he’ll tell you all about that in a moment – found his art in demand, with Glénat publishing his sci-fi series Dans L’Ombre Du Soleil. But his real grande entrance on the European bande dessinée scene came when legendary creators Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean (Moebius) Giraud saw his work and anointed him as Girard’s successor on art for their La Jeunesse de Blueberry (Young Blueberry) series. Many, many years of success in Europe followed, as well as work for US publishers, making him that rarest of things, a triple success across three very distinct comics markets – UK, Europe, and USA.

Seeing his artwork back here on the cover of Prog 2338 is an absolute thrill, just as it was to chat with him. So, without further ado, my great pleasure to introduce the wonderful Colin Wilson…

COLIN WILSON: I was thrilled to be asked to draw a Rogue Trooper cover for 2000 AD earlier this year, especially as this would continue my run of having something published in the weekly in every decade since I first started my career there back in 1980.

It was an exciting time in the 80s – I stepped off the plane from New Zealand looking forward to checking out a little of the UK before returning to NZ or Australia, and within a few months I was hunkered down in a cheap but very cold central London squat drawing my first professional comic work for 2000 AD, Initially on Judge Dredd, and then with Rogue Trooper.

I was soon also desperately trying to find a way to avoid being forced to return to New Zealand as (unbeknown to Tharg) I lacked the necessary permit to work in the UK. I never really did succeed in becoming 100% legal there, which was why several of my later RT episodes were completed on tiny tables in a couple of cheap, downmarket Paris Hotels.

Well, he might not have been 100% legal here, but that early Rogue Trooper work was well worth a little bit of bending the visa rules…

CW: While continuing to work for 2000 AD, my (soon-to-be) wife and I moved to Paris in early 1982, where we also spent the next few months visiting some of the great French comic publishers, using a selection of Rogue Trooper original pages to show them some of my current work. At the time 2000 AD artwork was never returned to the artists after publication, and so yet-to-be mailed (to the 2000 AD office) RT pages were the only samples of my work that I had to work with.

They were almost always completely baffled by what they were looking at, but eventually I got lucky, and signed my first contract to produce a three book science fiction series for Glenat [L’Ombre Du Soleil]. It was 15 years or so before I worked on 2000 AD again…

But RT was such a great character to work with. Dave Gibbons and Gerry Findley-Day had done all the heavy lifting creating the original series, and that 1st year alternating story arcs with Dave in the weekly gave me the boost I needed to think that maybe I could perhaps actually make a living drawing comics (which, in those pre-Internet days, was never going to be possible if I was forced to return to NZ).

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CW: But I was never really all that happy with the (I think) two Rogue Trooper covers that I did produce for the weekly back then. Unlike Dave’s RT covers, there was something stiff and ungainly about my own work that left me feeling unsatisfied.

Oh, artists, artists, artists! Why do you do this to yourselves. You’ve already seen two of Colin’s Rogue Trooper covers – but he was wrong, there’s actually a third, to Prog 269 (thank you Barney!) Now, you look at this and tell me there’s something stiff and ungainly about it???

CW: Which is why, when Tharg contacted me earlier this year, his request for an “old school, iconic Rogue Trooper illustration” threw down the challenge.

Looking back through a bunch of those early stories all I wanted was a simple, single vanishing point image of RT charging out of the frame, alone, hotly pursued by ‘the enemy’.

I sketched up a couple of variations on the theme, Tharg chose the final image, and I took a couple of days off from working my current series Nevada (published by Delcourt in France), and inked up the final art. Colour is something that I seldom have to deal with these days, but I also produced a quick B&W treatment of the way I saw the image looking in grey tones, and my job was done…

First up then, the couple of concept sketches Colin did, plus a few zoomed-in crops from them for your enjoyment…

And then the cover pencils for the chosen image…

And then Colin’s B&W treatment of the way he saw it all looking, in grey tones…

And finally, the finished cover with colours by the always amazing Dylan Teague…

Well, that was, I hope you agree, wonderful. I’ve loved Wilson’s work for so many years, especially when a friend showed me his astonishing Young Blueberry volumes – my sub-O-Level French may not have been good enough to read them, but there was so much excitement and amazement to be had through the artwork. So it was a huge honour and a pleasure to talk to him for this latest of his 2000 AD covers.

You can find Colin’s wonderful artwork on the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2338 from 28 June in shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop.

Now, extra stuff… because it’s Colin Wilson and I’d be remiss not to show you more, more, more of that amazing artwork.  And, of course, after you’ve read this, you should go and listen to the great man chat all about his life and work at the 2000 AD Thrillcast episode from 2020 here.

So, where to start? Well, let’s go right back to the beginning and showcase all of Colin’s 2000 AD cover art first…

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Then maybe a few bits of his Rogue Trooper artwork over the couple of years he was involved…

And finally, just as a particular treat, a complete 4-page Wilson-drawn Rogue Trooper episode from Fear of the Machine, this one from 2000 AD Prog 248, 1982…

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Now, moving on to the simply stunning work he did on Young Blueberry…

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And finally, his most recent series for Dargard, Nevada, written by Fred Duval and Jean-Pierre Pécau. As you’d expect, it looks simply stunning.

Set in the 1920s when the western United States was changing rapidly, the story centres on Nevada Marquez. Once an adventurer of sorts, he now works in Hollywood for former actress turned producer Louise Hathaway. But although this may be a new age, it doesn’t mean that this west is any less wild, as Nevada’s finding out. It’s Colin Wilson being Colin Wilson on every page, filling the imagination with imagery of the last vestiges of the Wild West, obviously delighting in revisiting the places, themes, and grand vistas that made his Young Blueberry so influential and incredible.

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!

We’re looking at the front cover of Judge Dredd Megazine 457 now – which is out now – with Kieran McKeown giving us the double trouble pairing of Dredd and Jack McBane for the finale of the excellent One-Eyed Jacks storyline.

It’s been a time-travel caper with a difference, as we’ve tracked villainous goings-on in 1970s New York City and 2145 Mega-City One in a thriller of a tale, one which has also shed light onto the Fargo bloodline.

Ken Niemand and Kieran McKeown, with Ian Richardson on art for episode 1, have blown us all away with this one and it’s fitting that Kieran gets the cover for the finale showing that final ‘meeting’ of two of the toughest cops of any time!

KIERAN MCKEOWN: I had initially wanted to do an homage to late 60s/early 70s cop movies for the cover.  ‘Homage’ is a fancy art word for ‘steal’. 

The one I liked was ‘Bullitt,’ probably my favourite cop movie from that era.  The car chase sequence is just a masterclass in visual storytelling. I probably learned more about visual storytelling from that one sequence alone than any other resource in my library of art books. 

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KM: Sadly, Matt said that IDW had already done a Dredd Bullitt homage.

Oh yes they had – and initially I had it in my head that it was the variant cover that the late, great, much missed Carlos Ezquerra did as a variant cover for Judge Dredd #1 from IDW, published November 2012.

Sure, thought I, It’s not quite an exact Bullitt homage, but it’s got the elements of it. So I figured it was most likely this one. Which of course gives me the perfect opportunity to share something by King Carlos with you…

At which point, a missive from TMO himself, most gracious and majestic and generous Tharg, came through... Idiot web-droid, it’s not the Carlos cover that’s the Bullitt homage but the subscription variant cover by Joe Coroney for 2014’s Judge Dredd Mega-City Two #1. Ooops. Bad me.

Tharg sees all, Tharg hears all, Tharg even knows what we’re typing. Meanwhile, I shall be enjoying quarter oil rations all month. So, THIS is the cover Tharg’s human representative was telling Kieran about…

Okay, back to Kieran, licking his wounds over losing out on the Bullitt image – but at least he’s not in a tiny cubicle smarting from a talking to from TMO!

KM: So I had to think of something else.  Reflecting on it, I felt it important that the cover featured both Dredd and McBane.  The novelty of the Dredd/McBane crossover was that you had these two guys from two very different worlds coming into contact.  So I really wanted to juxtapose Dredd with all this 60s & 70s era imagery.  So I decided to go with this…

My process is not all that different to any other artists. I get my reference, do my layouts and then finish. 

So with the space allowed, I figured the readers might be more interested in some of the finishing touches I employ.

These finishing touches probably don’t make a whole pile of visual difference in the final coloured version. But from experience, they do give a nice layer of polish to your work that editors respond positively to – which is important if you’re trying to get a job.  People that look at your work on Instagram also seem to respond more positively to this type of look in your artwork. I know that can seem trivial but Instagram is very important for building an artist’s profile.

So, when I finish inking a figure digitally, the first thing I do is pop a grey layer underneath…

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This just helps the figure pop out more from the white of the page. If you’re managing multiple different objects and figures on a page, strategic use of a grey layer is also helpful in emphasising particular elements for which you might want to draw the viewer’s eye. 

Now you can easily stop at the grey layer stage. But I like to take it one step further. So next, I make a duplicate of the black and white layer and place it between the B&W layer and the grey layer.  I turn the layer blue. You could use some other colour if you prefer.  There’s nothing special about blue. It just reminds me of those non-photocopy blue pencils I used to use in my old analog drawing days.

Next, Clip Studio and Photoshop have a function that allows you to blur an image. I use the “Gaussian Blur” on Clip Studio for this. I turn the blur up real high. What you’re left with is a very blurred blue image of the B&W layer – as seen below. 

I then turn the opacity of the blue layer right down so you get something like the above when the original B&W layer is overlaid. I learned this trick from Marc Brunet’s YouTube channel. I don’t really know what this step accomplished other than, in my opinion, the image looks cooler. I think it’s intended to be a really quick way of doing “AO” (ambient-occlusion) type shading. That is, softening the transitions between the shadow and light sides of your drawing as well as the midtones within the light side. As I said, they also remind me a bit of the old blue pencil construction lines, comic artist’s often used when drawing analog.

Personally, I just love seeing the artist’s construction peep through underneath a finished drawing. 

Anyway, I hope you found this somewhat interesting!

Nope, not interesting Kieran – fascinating. Sure, I had to look up ambient-occlusion, but that’s what’s always so good about hearing artists go into the nitty-gritty of putting their art together!

So there you go, thanks so much for Kieran to sending that one along – You can find Judge Dredd Megazine 457, released on 21 July, wherever you pick up your monthly Meg, including the 2000 AD web shop.

And if you’re after more McBane, the original John Wagner and John Cooper One-Eyed Jack strip from Valiant comic in 1975 is now available as a collection from the 2000 AD web shop.

But before you go, make sure you go and read Kieran’s interview all about One-Eyed Jacks here! And finally, you can find Kieran online at his Instagram.

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!

Another week, another stunning new strip in the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest – with Dan Abnett and Tazio Bettin’s Azimuth beginning in the pages of 2000 AD Prog 2337. Trust us, this one’s a stunner.

Now, over to Tazio to describe putting it all together…

TAZIO BETTIN: This cover was a bit of an experiment, as well as the fundamental reference I created for myself to set the aesthetical tone for the entire series. I drew it before I drew any pages, and I only had a vague idea in my head and Dan’s descriptions of a weird science-fantasy setting to start with and give Azimuth its aesthetics and identity.

Dan is a fantastic writer for many reasons, one of which being his ability to give you just enough information to set a direction, but not too much, so that you can build on top of his suggestions with a lot of freedom. I had a direction but was free to explore it.

So I went with my standard concept art process, which consists of amassing a visual database: I collected photos of Babylonian ziggurats, pyramids, Jaroslav Horejc’s Girl With Amphora statue from Prague (which has some really beautiful proportions, and I was kind of obsessed with), the bazaar of Sana’a in Yemen, Cambodian temples, etc. And mushrooms. Tons of reference photos of the strangest mushrooms in nature.

I knew I was going for a Métal Hurlant vibe, a homage to the aesthetics of Moebius, Druillet, and other French masters of the bande dessinée.

This was also a chance to set the tone for the use of colours as well. I concentrated on the use of chroma, the colour hues, more than value, i.e. its brightness, to define shapes, objects and planes, so as to give everything a surreal patina – also thanks to gradients with unusual colours. Shifting your colours in mid-process and just see what happens is a great way for me to find interesting solutions.

This was also the first time I drew Suzi, the protagonist, outside of some concept sketches.

And speaking of those Suzi concept sketches… here’s a couple of stages of Tazio’s very first images of Suzi…

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TAZIO BETTIN: Once again, Dan gave me complete freedom to define this character’s looks. Perhaps I was a little inspired by my recent reading of the Mahābhārata, but on the spur of the moment I decided to base her looks on one of the many Indo-Aryan ethnic groups from the Indian continent. You don’t see enough characters, let alone protagonist characters from those origins. Here I wanted to show Suzi in full figure, but close enough to properly show her attire and tattoo details.

Composition-wise, I went with a sort of an opening shot, so as to give the reader a sense of being at the threshold of things to unfold: “this is where everything begins”. It’s a status quo that is about to break, right before the whole story and its action unfolds. Everything gets crazy afterwards. I hope you enjoy!

It might be worth noting that I did the main character and the background in two separate drawings and then worked them all together in the final rendition…

And to show you what he meant with the two separate drawings, Tazio also sent along the finished Suzi image from the quite brilliant cover and the pencils for the backgrounds to the cover…

Thank you so much Tazio for sending along those images for the cover – and what a cover! In fact, having read the first episode, what a strip, a stunning new series for the Galaxy’s Greatest.

Azimuth begins in 2000 AD Prog 2337, you can find it everywhere the Prog is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop from 21 June.

And you can see more of Tazio’s excellent covers for Covers Uncovered here – there’s Sinister Dexter covers for Prog 2259, and Prog 2283, and then there was an unusual guest appearance in this Andy Clarke Covers Uncovered for Prog 2290 where we talked all things Austin Allegro! Finally, there’s his cover for Hope… In The Shadows for Prog 2302.

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, we bid farewell to Book 2 of Enemy Earth by Cavan Scott and Luke Horsman, with Zoe and Jules finding out that even on an oil rig they’re still in a whole heap of trouble from the nasties filling their world. Luke’s delivered a stunning cover that just hints at what terrors lie beneath the surface…

Everything started for this latest Enemy Earth cover with a missive from the Mighty One… here’s Luke… ‘For this cover, Tharg the Mighty requested something akin to the classic Jaws poster.’ Given his orders from on high, Luke set to work with a quick colour rough.

After the customary wait that all art droids have to suffer while Tharg ponders, approval was handed down and Luke set to work, ending up with what he describes as ‘some suitably gloomy looking inks.’

And after the inks, time to add ‘some painterly colours with a nice limited colour scheme.’

And there you have it, another excellent cover there from Luke, and a fitting cover for the finale to Enemy Earth.  

Thank you to Luke for sending that one along – you can look for his cover on the shelves (or the virtual shelves of the 2000 AD web shop) from 7 June.

For more from Luke here at 2000 AD.com, he’s talked Enemy Earth Covers Uncovered with us for Prog 2303, Prog 2307, and Prog 2329 and we’ve had the pleasure of chatting to Luke three times now. First with Cavan here about the very first Enemy Earth in 2000 AD Regened Prog 2256, here for another chat with them both for the first series of Enemy Earth that began in Prog 2301, and finally, there’s an interview here with Luke and writer Mike Carroll about another Regened strip, Action Pact, that was in Prog 2220.