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, cover superstar Toby Willsmer returns to give us Rogue Trooper exploding into action for your regular dose of thrill-power!
Inside the Prog, we have Geoffrey D. Wessel, Paul Marshall, Pippa Bowland, and Jim Campbell giving us the latest Rogue Trooper thriller – Recon, with Rogue finding out that not every E.T. is as cute and friendly as Spielberg’s.
This Rogue cover is just the latest from the Brit-born, New Zealand-bard artist who’s never lost his love of 2000 AD, no matter how far from the UK he goes! He’s been a regular cover artist since he first caught Tharg’s attention as the winner of the January 2021 Art Stars contest. Since then he’s given us some really dynamic painted covers, none more so than this one with Rogue very literally exploding from the cover, right into your face…
So, let’s have at it Toby…
TOBY WILLSMER: I’ve been a fan of the Rogue character since it appeared in the prog in the early 80s. So when Matt asked if I’d like to do an action charging Rogue Trooper cover, I was instantly down for that.
As a kid I never really understood the story back then but marvelled at the badassness of Rogue and the uncompromising space marine vibe it gave me as a youngster. Getting lost in Dave Gibbons’s artwork was pure escapism for me at that age, something I’ve always loved about comics.
I had an idea that I thought would be a cool dynamic and set about getting Rogue to have a mid-charge pose that I liked…
I took the idea I had, plugged it into the good ol’ cover template and roughed it into something that Matt could mull over. I had a couple of charging ideas that I liked and In the end it was the legs that gave me the different ideas for Matt. He chose the lovely legs of number one.
I went ahead and put together a colour scheme for Matt to give him an idea of the direction of what the finished piece would look like.
I love this stage of doing a cover and felt like I was a kid again, reading Rogue Trooper and shouting ‘charge’ and making ‘pew pew’ noises as I put it all together.
With Matt happy with the direction it’s going, I went ahead and drew up the line work and added some basic shadows and values. At this stage, I changed Rogue’s face to give him a more gnarly ‘charge’ expression. Kinda how I used to imagine it when I was a kid looking at those early Rogue strips.
As I had planned the background to mostly be an explosion I left that out as I’d just paint that in. I added some battlefield carnage shapes to the sides to help frame the action and add some depth.
From there it’s onto all the good stuff, adding the lighting, water splashes, firing bullets, motion and details until I reach a point where I feel it’s all done…
Another one where I had way too much shoot ’em up fun!
Another stunning Willsmer cover right there, with everyone’s favourite blue GI really ready to rock and roll! And if the artist has that much fun doing it, it always comes out looking great.
You can find Toby’s latest cover for Prog 2397 everywhere the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, from 28 August 2024, including the 2000 AD web shop.
As for our growing collection of his work at Covers Uncovered – take a gander at these – Prog 2240, Prog 2262, Prog 2269, Prog 2318, Prog 2332, Prog 2352, Prog 2374, and Prog 2389 . And to see what it was made Tharg sit up and take notice – here’s Toby’s winning Art Stars entry that started all this off! And finally, go say hello to Toby online here.
