Tag: coversuncovered

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 return of Jake Lynch to Covers Uncovered with the cover to 2000 AD Prog 2203, featuring a moody, blue-mood Judge Dredd surveying his world. Inside, you’ll see Dredd and Maitland having a crucial heart-to-heart over Maitland’s discovery of the solution to MC-1’s crime problems in the finale to Arthur Wyatt, Rob Williams, and Boo Cook’s ‘Carry the Nine.‘

As seems to be the way of these things, the poor Lynch droid was, yet again, desperate for a little love from Tharg. But, as we all know by now, TMO doesn’t want love from or give love out to his droids. All he wants is the work. Luckily, Lynch’s work is there for you all to love on the cover of Prog 2203, out on 14 October and available from the 2000 AD web shop.

We caught up with the emotionally drained Lynch to chat about the making of yet another great looking cover –

I wanted to do a pic of Dredd that had ’nowhere to hide’, no foreground element, no trickery, just Dredd (hopefully) standing solid.  So that was the first challenge – the rough.

Thankfully, The Mighty One accepted it, reminding me that I am a snivelling worm.

The next job is to work out how the light is going to hit it.

Followed by a simple, non-distracting background...

And finally – massaging it all together I finally work it up into the colour version you see today!

By complete surprise I discover that the cover is being published on my birthday, 14th October.  I think for a fleeting moment that maybe, JUST maybe, Tharg doesn’t hate me after all.  I send an email in thanks, He asks me what the hell I’m talking about and to get back to work.

Happy b-b-birthday to me…*sniff*

Aw, poor old Jake. We love you at least. And we love seeing you on the cover of the Prog every time. Thanks to him for taking the time to send us the images for this latest mean and moody cover and hopefully his tears won’t be getting over the artwork for the next job for Tharg – you know TMO hates getting salty droid tears in the artwork.

Lynch has been regularly appearing in the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest since his first Future Shock, Dying Wishes, with Eddie Robson in Prog 1862 (January 2014). Since then he’s become a go to artist for Tharg on Dredd, delivering the goods again and again, most recently in Judge Dredd Megazine 423 and the latest instalment in Lynch and Arthur Wyatt’s saga of Orlok, The Red Prince, and The Red Queen’s Gambit.

You can find more of Lynch’s excellent covers at Covers Uncovered for Progs 2017 and 2181. And we talked art, Dredd, Y-fronts, and more with Lynch for his stunningly silly Dredd & Zombo strip in the Sci-Fi Special earlier this year right here, where he stepped into Henry Flint’s art shoes for Zombo to become Mr Scribbly number two.

You remember that one, right? Where Lynch gets to draw ol’ Stoney face being his very best stoney… despite

And where we got to see Zombo deliver the immortal line…

You’ll next see Jake’s artwork inside 2000 AD with the second series of Proteus Vex as he takes over from Henry Flint on art duties. That second series is out later this year, but here are a couple of work in progress pieces from Lynch…

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 all getting a bit nasty in the pages of the Prog, with the greatest of the great whites taking a big bite out of the tourist trade down in Cornwall. Yes, since reappearing in 2000 AD Prog 2200, Hook Jaw has been turning the seas red once more in the tale from Alec Worley and Leigh Gallagher.

But for the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2202, readers get even more of the ‘Jaw with this stunning Simon Coleby cover…

Simon’s been working in comics for a while now, with his first big break coming here at the Galaxy’s Greatest with the 1989 Future Shocks tale Rogan’s Last Ride (with Ian Rimmer in Prog 647). Since then he’s drawn Rogue Trooper, Judge Dredd, Venus Bluegenes, Bato Loco, Low Life, Sinister Dexter, and plenty more. He’s also drawn for Marvel UK, Marvel US, DC Comics, and Wildstorm on the likes of Warheads, Death’s Head II, Punisher 2099, Lobo, The Legion, The Authority, and Fringe.

Most recently, you’ll have seen his striking work on The Vigilant (with Simon Furman), featuring Rebellion’s super-team of classic British comic book characters and Jaegir (with Gordon Rennie), chronicling the other side of the Nort-Souther wars with Kapitan-Inspector Atalia Jaegir.

And now here he is, showing us the nightmare that is Hook Jaw. But how did the cover come about? Best thing to do is to go straight to Simon and ask!

So – Hook Jaw. During my three and a half decades of drawing comics, I’ve had the amazing good fortune to work on some really iconic characters. And getting to draw the Great White, SJW, snowflake, gammon-devouring eco-selachimorpha is up there with the very best of ’em. 

I did read Action as a kid – I suspect my rather conservative dad never really looked at what was in the pages behind the rather innocuous title. Controversial as the comic was, I reflect on my long years drawing gothic macabre art, collecting and playing aggressively metal guitars and enjoying the darker fringes of the death metal world, and I conclude that the comic had absolutely no negative early influence on my life whatsoever.

This is, of course, the title that was condemned as a moral disgrace on Nationwide by Frank Bough. That’s Mr. Bough who shortly thereafter was revealed as an enthusiastic wearer of ladies’ undergarmentry and a keen consumer of nose-candy. We all need a hobby, I suppose. Interesting to reflect that in current times Frank’s recreational activities would barely merit a third of a page of ranting in the Daily Express or more than a few moments on HIGNFY, and the comic itself would hardly provoke a ripple of outrage. How times change.

And so, the cover…

I began with the customary handful of fineliner rough sketches. I was looking at the broad theme of Hook Jaw targeting the usual rig-workers, polluters of the oceans and suchlike.

One of my ideas was a slightly cheeky bit of self-reference — harking back to one of the Dredd covers I did back in the mists of time, before I’d actually learned to draw.

Old Green Bonce liked the first sketch, but asked for it to be a little more direct and impactful — to lose the (presumed) rig worker and the rig itself, and just concentrate on the shark’s head crashing out of the waves. I worked up a revised sketch based on that request, and that one got the thumbs-up from The Nerve Centre.

I should mention that at the time I did the sketches, I didn’t realise that the story would be running in ‘the Prog’ and had assumed it was a standalone project, which is why I placed the Hook Jaw logo on the pages. It’s about the same size as the 2000 AD logo itself, so that wasn’t a problem.

The rest of it was just a straightforward process of the usual tight pencils and then inking the piece — Hunt 102 nib, Daler Calli ink, brush pen and a few chinagraph pencil touches on A3 bristol board. Some of the white areas of texture were added digitally after the drawing was scanned.

I did look at the piece the day after I’d submitted it, and I decided that the inks could be a little more energetic. And so I inked it again, and also sent that one over to The Nerve Centre.

I preferred the second one, but Tharg went with the first. Who am I to argue? I don’t need a Rigellian Hotshot on top of the endless parade of delights that this year has already presented.

Of course, I have to thank Dylan Teague for his brilliant work colouring my drawing. I’m really happy with how it all came together.

Thank you so much to Simon for sending over those fantastic images and giving us a look behind the scenes. You can get hold of Coleby’s cover on 2000 AD Prog 2202 from the web shop right now!

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 chat to Tiernen Trevallion about his latest cover – 2000 AD Prog 2201, featuring the return of that Fiend of the Eastern Front!

The artist first appeared in 2000 AD with the Terror Tale, ‘Man Bites God‘, written by Al Ewing in Prog 1533 and in Judge Dredd Megazine with a Tales From The Black Museum written by Arthur Wyatt in issue 289. But it’s his work on the grumpiest Guv’nor, Harry Absalom that he’s best known for around these parts. The supernatural spin-off from Caballistics, Inc. began in Prog 1732 and ran for several stories before ending in a fabulously fitting finale in Prog 2143, all written by Gordon Rennie.

He’s also been working with Ian Edginton on the Fiends of the Eastern Front series, with the series Fiends of the Western Front running from Progs 2111 to 2115 in 2019. That six-parter was all blood and bats, with the Black Max guest-starring.

And now we’re back with another Edginton/Trevallion Fiends, returning once more to Romania in a new Fiends Of The Eastern Front – Constanta.

We chatted to an incredibly busy Tiernan about his process and putting together that eye-catching first cover for the new series!

Apologies, this is going to be pretty brief, partly because I’m busy but also the process is fairly straight forward.

I sketch it… ink it… colour it…

The sketch I’ve included is an alternative version. The right side shows the coils of a serpent as opposed to the Wilson/bat thing.

I ink digitally, here using four layers, one for each of the foreground elements of the panels, and the fourth for the background. This layer is knocked back to give some distance, and make the foreground pop.

Colour: I’ve gone for a muted, contrasting tone. Pretty simple.

There’s a final layer over the top for the rain.

Thank you to the good Mr Trevallion for giving us the skinny on that great looking cover. You can find it on the shelves of your local comic shop or newsagent on September 30 – and, of course, you can get it from the 2000 AD web shop!

If you’re looking for more from Tiernen Trevallion – try these brilliant Covers Uncovered features written by Pete Wells – Prog 1748, Prog 1767, Prog 1809, Prog 2042, and Absalom: Ghosts of London. But first, the stunning cover to Prog 2112 – with the last Edginton & Trevallion Fiends of the Western Front strip!

And finally, the beginning and end of Harry Absalom…

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 chat to art droid Paul Williams about his latest cover – 2000 AD Prog 2199.

Paul was the winner of the 2000 AD art search competition at Thought Bubble 2017 and has since been published in Prog 2072’s Future Shock: Sunday Scientist. and in the DeMarco, P.I. 3-parter An Eye… in Megazine issue 410-413.

With Prog 2199, he’s created a classic Dredd image that fits perfectly with the finale to the latest Dredd epic, End of Days, that you’ll be able to see for yourselves from the 2000 AD web shop and comic shops when 2000 AD Prog 2199 hits the shelves on 16 September.

Now, over to Paul to chat about that cover…

Being a droid that’s fairly new off the production line, I wouldn’t expect to be the first person that Tharg thinks of when commissioning covers and so my approach has been to jot up an idea of my own and risk a Rigellian Hotshot by offering it up to The Mighty One on my own initiative.

It’s a risk you have to be willing to take when fighting for place in the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic and, fortunately, the reprimanding blasts have been kept to a minimum.

The trick with designing a cover that can be slotted in at multiple points throughout a year is that it has to be exciting and eye-catching as well as somewhat original, which can be difficult to pull off when you’re not working with any particular story specifics in mind AND there are also more than 2000 previous ideas you need to steer clear of (I recently had a different pitch rejected because it was unintentionally similar to a previous Cliff Robinson cover and, let’s face it, opening yourself up to comparison with a droid of that calibre is never going to end well!). In this case, I felt like I had a decent concept in mind so I began to jot down some early ideas in Procreate.

Here’s one trick I sometimes use when sketching with unusual perspectives, which is to find a shot with roughly the same angle I’m aiming for and take note of the line directions. I then used those lines alone to very roughly outline and place the city blocks at the foot of the image. At this point, I was unsure what style of city block I would go for, so they’re quite indistinct but the placement is pretty much locked in.

Also of note, I always try and find a dominant “shape” in my compositions as I find those are the ones that I have the most success with, artistically. Here, I clearly latched onto the triangular shape that frames Dredd between the city blocks as I liked the way it would lead the eye with the inclusion of the 2000 AD logo atop. If you imagine that block of text across the top, the direction in which I intend to take the reader is like a big number seven across the page.

As much as I was getting a good feeling from that initial doodle, I didn’t think it worthy enough to pitch in that state so decided to draw it up with a bit more oomph.

Next, I took to the 3D modelling software Poser to create some reference for those city blocks, though sticking with that original placement I sketched out previously. The mesh of these shapes were then used as guidelines for carving out all the areas of detail, which is a process I always spend far too long on because it’s difficult to find the right balance between those and the areas you don’t fill in.

With this one, in particular, I wanted Dredd to remain the focus and so didn’t want to add too much complex detail around him.

I also made a few other subtle alterations from the original sketch, including tilting Dredd’s head down a bit, enlarging the hand and making the skull look more like something that could actually possibly reside within a human head.

I also had to cheat a bit with the shape of the skull so that it would meet with the top of the helmet in a more visually pleasing manner but the logo will mostly obscure that so shhhh, don’t tell anyone.

So, that “oomphed-up” rough was sent off to Tharg’s delegate on Earth, Matt Smith, who deemed it worthy of adorning the cover of 2000 AD and the final version was inked (all on my iPad Pro) with just a few minor adjustments.

Thanks to Paul for letting us inside the making of his latest 2000 AD cover.

You can read an interview with Paul and his co-winner, script-droid Laura Bailey here and both Paul and Laura talk about their DeMarco strip on the Thrill-Cast here. And you can find Paul on Twitter and Behance.

And for an extra treat here’s Paul’s first 2000 AD cover – Prog 2146…

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.

But this week, there’s more than just 2000 AD – this week, we have the publication of the Battle of Britain Special ! We’ve shown you the making of the web-exclusive cover by Keith Burns yesterday, but now it’s the turn of the brilliant artist behind the regular cover that you’ll see on the shelves of your local comic shop and newsagents.

And that action-packed cover comes to you courtesy of Nelson Dániel.

Inside this new Battle of Britain Special you’ll find action and adventure, bravery and heroism, but also strips looking deeper into the tragedy of war and the terrible sacrifices involved. Amongst some incredible new strips from the likes of Alex de Campi, Alan Grant, Rob Williams, Simon Coleby, Glenn Fabry, PJ Holden, and Tom Paterson, there’s also a return to the pages of Battle for two classic strips – Rat Pack, by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns, and El Mestizo by Alan Hebden and Brent McKee.

It’s a must-have collection of the best war strips in decades and it’s out on 16 September from the Treasury of British Comics! If you get your copy from comic shops or newsagents it’s the Nelson Dániel cover you need to be looking for!

Nelson’s been involved in cinema, illustration, and comics for the last 16+ years. He’s worked as art director, production designer, concept artist and storyboard artists for feature films including Machete, Robotech, Fantastic Four, and The Green Inferno. As far as comics, he’s worked as an artist and colourist for Marvel and IDW, where he’s provided art and covers for the IDW USA Judge Dredd series.

This is his first work for 2000 AD or the Treasury of British Comics and it’s a great cover that jumps off the shelves – great visual imagery, perfect for what’s inside!

Unfortunately, Nelson was way, way, way behind with deadlines and couldn’t carve out the time to talk to us about his work putting the cover together. But he did send over the important part – the images of his process stages!

First up, the preliminary thumbnails for editorial to look at. Already fixed on the idea of a poor German gunner looking out at the deathly Spitfires, it was a case of the close-up or longer shot.

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Next stage is pencils, with a shift in position for the gunner and even more Spitfires!

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Next, it’s time for putting down inks…

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Everything in place and ready for colours now – two colour versions were produced. No doubt editorial saw the first and just decided it was time for more guns, more bullets, more effects, more, more, more!!!

And the end result of that work? Well, it’s the action-packed view through a Luftwaffe gunner’s turret as the Spitfire’s open fire – not a sight you’d like to see from that perspective at all – but a sight that makes a great cover!

Thanks so much to Nelson for chatting to us about this action-packed cover to the Battle of Britain Special. Be sure to follow Nelson on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and ArtistGO site.

And don’t miss out on the greatest Battle action in 30 years when the Battle of Britain Special is released on 16 September!

And finally, just a little extra – a glimpse at Nelson’s Judge Dredd work over at IDW…

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.

But this week, there’s more than just 2000 AD – this week, we have the publication of the Battle of Britain Special with a web exclusive cover by Keith Burns.

The Battle of Britain Special features the return of classic strips, Rat Pack and El Mestizo, alongside all-new strips capturing the spirit of the original Battle. Inside you’ll find work from Alex de Campi, Garth Ennis, Alan Hebden, Rob Williams, Simon Coleby, Glenn Fabry, PJ Holden, Tom Paterson, and many, many more.

It’s a must-have collection of the best war strips in decades and it’s out on 16 September from the Treasury of British Comics!

BUY NOW >>

The cover for the stunning web-exclusive Battle Special is from comics and aviation artist Keith Burns, who also features inside on the Rat Pack strip with Garth Ennis. He first broke into comics in 2007 but he’s also garnered acclaim with his painted aviation art, joining the Guild of Aviation Artists, exhibited at the RAF Club in London, and is currently incredibly busy in that particular field. However, he’s always glad to take time out to return to comics, something he still loves and, as he says, something that’s helped his aviation art to become as good as it is.

Right then, over to Keith Burns for the making of this cover!

I started in comics and that’s where I learnt everything I use in painting. Working in black and white made me concentrate on tone and recession. Working in brush and ink improved my brush work for painting immensely and also makes you describe everything clearly, you can’t really suggest things with inks the way you can with painting which makes it much more difficult.

There’s no better training than comics for figuring out composition, you have to compose thousands of panels and as you go you figure out what makes them look interesting. Completely unique to comics is the fact that you have to lead the readers eye from panel to panel through the page, you don’t have to do this in paintings or single illustrations, yes, you have to lead the eye around the image but not out to the next image or wonder about how it will fit in the whole page full of other images. Then there’s capturing the physical movement and kinetic energy which again I figured out in comics. In comics you have to draw the most amazing made up scenes and make them look convincing.

Aircraft have to look like they’re flying and that takes time to figure out, again I figured this out in comics first by making them look like they weren’t flying. Finally, I always cram some storytelling into my paintings, this is the most important aspect in comics in my opinion and the part I find the most enjoyable. Compared to comics I find painting a doddle and am lucky to be able to still do both. Comics are easily the toughest art job out there.

I was delighted to be asked to produce a cover for the Battle of Britain Special… as a fan of Battle and Rebellion.

I usually start off with a few thumbnails that are gibberish to anyone but me –

Once I have two or three ideas I’ll photograph model kits of the relevant aircraft outside in daylight. Having somehow ended up doing WW2 aviation a lot it makes sense to have a library of models that I can use over and over for reference.

Jobs always come up requiring models I haven’t yet built and so the 3D library is always growing I only have one model of each aircraft so when I need multiply types I have to keep moving them and photographing them within the same scene which is laborious and easy to muck up.

Once I’ve photographed the models I’ll put the photo’s together in photoshop. This is also time consuming and sometimes requires re-photographing the models if they don’t sit together correctly, it’s very easy ruin the whole image with one aircraft that looks like it’s not obeying the laws of physics even if it’s tumbling out of the sky.

I’ll then use these images to pencil a rough that is readable to others.

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Once Editor Keith has made the choice of which pencil rough is to be used, I set about a couple of small colours studies.

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After all that process, the painting is the most enjoyable part and the more you put into the early stages the easier the painting is. I wanted to keep the colours bright and mad like the Air Ace and Battle colours as opposed to realistic. I ended up doing a larger than usual cover size painting for the fun of it.

And that’s it – although, as always, that explanation – ‘the painting is the most enjoyable part’, rather plays down the absolute brilliance of what it is Burns has managed to do. Going from those pencil roughs and colour roughs to the final, published work of art – he makes it all sound so wonderfully simple, yet we know it’s far from it!

Thanks so much to Keith Burns for chatting to us about this stunning web-exclusive cover to the Battle of Britain Special. You can also find his comic work inside on Rat Pack, written by Garth Ennis – it’s a classic tale of the worst of the British Army!

Be sure to follow Keith on Twitter and check out some absolutely superb examples of his aviation art at keithburns.co.uk.

And don’t miss out on the greatest Battle action in 30 years when the Battle of Britain Special is released on 16 September!

BUY NOW >>

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, its time to chat (briefly) to the cover artist for 2000 AD Prog 2198, Luke Preece. You can get hold of this stunning Sinister Dexter cover with the boys looking their best bad selves with 2000 AD Prog 2198, out in shops and from the 2000 AD webshop on 9 September.

Luke Preece is an illustrator based out of the West Midlands in the UK. He describes himself as ‘A child of the 80’s raised on a mixture of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comics, Movies and Metal music.’ Over the years, he’s worked with Marvel, Lucasfilm, Metallica, Slipknot, Ozzy, Sony Music, Music For Nations, Santa Cruz Skateboards, Metal Hammer, Xbox and more. But for 2000 AD, he’s was one of Tharg’s design minions between 2004-2011 and has a few gorgeous looking covers under his belt as well as being responsible for the design of the Judge Dredd Case Files.

And he’s a busy, busy, busy man which is why he’s had to send his apologies about this Covers Uncovered seeing as he simply didn’t have time to fill us in on the workings of making his latest 2000 AD cover featuring those bad boys of Downlode, Finnigan Sinister and Raymone Dexter as they look at taking down the A.I. that’s taking over the city in the ongoing Sinister Dexter – Bulletopia storyline.

Here’s what Luke emailed over to us…

“To be honest this cover was pretty straight forward to do. Matt Smith already had the idea of having the characters posing in front of the city skyline. It was up to me to make it a reality…“

See, that is a mean and moody pair of gun sharks right there. The epitome of cool against a Downlode sunset, posing for the artist before heading off to bust a few heads.

Over to Luke once more…

“Luckily, he liked my rough straight away so rendering final art was made easy because of this. It was also super fun as I’d not drawn these characters before.”

Which is why we have just the rough and the final, inked and coloured, cover for this one… but hey, that’s just fine when the end result looks just this good!

All that’s really changed from rough to final is that Finn’s had a bit of a hair tidy up and changed his jacket – obviously a man who likes looking his best for his cover shot. And Ray’s added just that little bit of extra product to the hair to make that quiff even more spectacular!

Thank you to Luke there for taking a break from a veritable mountain of work to send those over to us. It really is a stunning looking cover. Don’t forget to check out more of Luke’s work right here.

Now, as for Luke’s previous work, our esteemed colleague in Covers, the great Pete Wells, has chatted to Luke twice now, for the covers to Prog 2012 here and Prog 2048 here. And here’s just a smaple of Luke’s past 2000 AD cover work…

And of course, we couldn’t leave you without paying tribute to the incredible design work that Luke did for the Judge Dredd Case Files…

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 third Regened Prog of the year, with 2000 AD Prog 2196 – out 26 August!

Tharg’s nephew Joko-Jargo takes over once more to deliver all-ages Thrills including Cadet Dredd, Pandora Perfect, Finder & Keeper, An all-ages Future Shock, and Department K! But first, that brilliant cover from the fantastic Neil Roberts.

We last saw Neil on the cover of the Prog 2189, with a particularly toothy looking Dredd for End of Days. This time though, it’s time for a new Regened cover… part family portrait, part homage to Katsuhiro Otomo. So, without further ado – over to Neil for the commentary…

The brief for this particular piece was very open – a child-friendly Dredd image. Easy, right?

Initially, I opted for a bright, catalogue-style image, two cadets (one Dredd) smiling but holding daysticks. A classic bit of juxtaposition there.

Tharg didn’t go for this and wanted something more dynamic, cadets on bikes.

So that’s where we went!

One of the coolest depictions of motorcycles and speed in comics has to be found in Katsuhiro Otomo’s “Akira”. Those neon light-streaks always look soooo cool.

So I used that as my main point of inspiration.

In this image, I also wanted to play up the contrast between linear and painted art, but that’s just something I’ve wanted to try out for a while.

The composition was intended to show Dredd and Rico out on their Lawmasters, patrolling the streets of Mega-City One – with Rico subtly sneering and veering off course, whilst Dredd sternly continues on.

The next major issue for me was how to draw Dredd and Rico as children.

I often use reference for my work and the best and most appropriate reference I had to hand was my son, as he does a mean chin… and I couldn’t pass up the chance to immortalise him as a comic icon. Just like this…

After that, it was the usual case of sitting down, putting on the headphones and painting. A lot of painting.

And When all that was done, we had ourselves a cover.

And that cover looks just like this… a great looking Regened cover featuring Cadets Dredd and Rico…

Thank you so much to Neil (and his boy!) for letting us inside the making of this latest Regened cover. Now, just a couple of extra images he sent along – blow-ups of the various parts of the cover for us to look at, where the Akira homage is so strong!

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 David Hitchcock to grace the cover of the Galaxy’s Greatest – with the terrifying return of Quilli for the cover of Prog 2195, which is out now!

Quilli, created by Hitchcock and writer Laura Bailey, first appeared in 2000 AD Prog 2091 (July 2018), before appearing again in The Quilli Committee in Prog 2134 (June 2019).

It all began as a tale of ventriloquism gone wrong, with Jerry Reginaldo claiming to be channelling an ancient God called Quilli through his puppet. Following his ‘tragic accident’ on stage, Quilli gained something of a cult following, leading to a journalist going undercover to get to the truth… and that didn’t end well either!

So, what terrors will this third Quilli tale bring forth? Only one way to find out – pick up 2000 AD Prog 2195 – available from newsagents, comic shops, and the 2000 AD web shop from 19 August.

So, over to David to take us through putting together the cover…

I initially spoke to Laura about an idea I had for a possible cover image. There was a scene that cried out for a cover slot, I sketched the idea out and thankfully the great green one requested to see it as finished art. 

This particular instalment has a ‘Wicker Man’ feel to it, where the children are harvesting a plant which is later revealed to be used as a hallucinogenic.

I love drawing spooky woods and gnarly trees and I thought Quilli needed to be looming ominously in the background whilst in the foreground chaos ensued, as the police officer has a bad case of Quilli Vision.

This time I didn’t feel I could colour it traditionally as I did the previous cover. I asked Tharg if he could get it digitally coloured as it needed to have a ‘trippy’ look, maybe a strobe effect here and there and certainly a glowing effect on Quilli’s eyes.

All in all it needed to show the reader that the nightmare scene was actually the officer’s hallucination.

Thanks to David Hitchcock for filling us in on the latest appearance of Quilli – be careful with those ventriloquist dummies kids, you never know quite where it will end up!

You can follow David on Twitter – @dhitchcie, where you’ll be able to see more of his beautifully rendered artwork for the likes of Frankenstein Texas, Gothic, The Signalman, Springheeled Jack, and more.

To end, here’s a little recap of the previous appearances of Quilli, beginning with two pages from the five-page Terror Tale in Prog 2091…

And now, from Quilli‘s second appearance in Prog 2134 – the cover by David Hitchcock and the first two pages of The Quilli Committee…

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 return of Mark Harrison with his next cover for The Out, his strip with Dan Abnett. It’s 2000 AD Prog 2193 and it’s pretty darn wonderful.

In The Out, Abnett and Harrison bring us the tale of Cyd Finlea, photo-journalist for the Global Neographic organisation in the furthest edge of the universe, far into the future. She travels, she photographs things, she sends them in, she gets paid, she moves on and repeats it all over again. And then things start getting really interesting. Over the course of this first series, we’ve seen Abnett and Harrison set up a truly fantastic universe with incredible visuals of absolute alienness and grand scale.

So, we sat Harrison down and got him to share the making of this one with us. The fun starts straight away, as Harrison entitles the thing…

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“Now THERE’S Something you don’t see every day…much!”

(or – A Little Love Letter to the classic generation of Science Fiction and Fantasy book cover art)

The OUT cover #2 – ‘Giant Star Beast fights Space Cruiser whilst being attacked by fighter squadron over a city on a distant planet’ was one of those covers that just came together very easily.

It was a type of cover that harkened back to the days of nostalgically deceptive comic covers that promised great thrills inside only to leave the young wide-eyed reader gloriously disappointed, in that the cover had NOTHING to do with the strip inside! Or more like a cover from ye olden days of 2000 AD, bright primary colours, hyperbole…Hyper thrills!‘

The idea I’ve had in my head for a while, based on an old cartoon I saw of two men fishing on a lake (loch) and seeing a serpentine monster rise up from the depths (Nessie) to attack a flying saucer that is, in turn, firing on the monster. One of the nonplussed men turns to the other to say: “Well there’s a sight you don’t see very often.”

It was the juxtaposition of the mundane against the amazing (and calamitous) and their understated reaction that made it funny.

It was something I would discover would be hard to replicate on the cover because although Cyd is an average 40 something-year-old 21st Century woman travelling the stars with a line in sardonic understatement herself, pretty much everything she is surrounded by is always amazing, different and otherworldy. So the joke loses a bit of that contrast as there is not enough recognisable “other”.

Still, I proceeded and was so confident in the idea I kinduv went straight to rough digital pencils and colour silhouettes before thinking “Hmmm…. Maybe I should run this past Tharg first”. Fortunately Tharg was okay with it.

In terms of art process, I’ve recently started ‘drawing’ in silhouettes of colour or tone. I say “drawing”. After an initial sketch it’s a case of using the lasso tool in PhotoShop to outline a silhouette and fill with colour (as you see in the submitted rough draft).

This silhouette is built up first in Quick Mask before committing to a layer.

Those initial colours can be reselected and line work added to them with an action or two to give an outline or change the colour, add a texture or more art.

That is repeated for every colour to build up outlines that are then properly drawn into. For most of the time I’m selecting and filling until getting to the details.

It’s something I’ve been refining over the course of the strip and hopefully, it’s going to define how The Out looks in future episodes.

The ship came together nicely, straight out of the Chris Foss shipyards, engines belching out voluminous smoke. A clever scale visual Foss and John Harris used to give their ships mass. We can all equate to smokestacks or cooling towers on the horizon and how massive those are. Real-world reference to sell the scale.

People scattering from the city through the checkerboard fields for an additional scale assist. The ‘Chess Piece’ city sky line was suggested by a friend and that went with the checkerboard crops.

Distant flat almost featureless horizons were a favourite thing amongst sci-fi artists. It provided focus on the foreground but also suggested an uncomfortable vast emptiness beyond the safety of man’s little foothold in space. The unimaginable expanse of the unknown.

Talking of unknowns, the creature was trickier, as sort of squid/insect combination. There’s more and the following gives it away and I hope works subliminally … but the combat is not all it seems...

I designed the ship and creatures ‘maws’ to look deliberately the same as a visual clue to the reader.

You see the creature isn’t attacking the starship.

It’s mating with it. (‘Oh the humanity!’)

I envisioned a case of mistaken identity. Beast on the prowl in mating season ‘sees’ (via electrical signals- it has no eyes as such) a similarly looking ‘mate’ parked above a city – the military space cruiser. And, like a misdirected whale, advances intent on making the earth move for everyone unfortunately involved. Fighters launch from the cruiser to attack ineffectually like annoying gnats. The creatures ovipositor spears the ship, scattering its eggs.

It was why Cyd was wagging her finger in the shot. ‘So much for ‘La petite mort’ was another idea for a cover tag line I had in mind. This cover is going to get printed, right?

(Or if that’s too much information… It’s a giant monster attacking a space ship!)

It’s the sort of visual humour, sci-fi film and TV references, along with modern art that I like to layer throughout the strip, more for my own enjoyment and for those who might get the references. If you think you see something familiar, you’re probably right and that’s great!

This cover and the story of Cyd’s adventures in The Out are inspired by the sci-fi book cover illustrations of legendary artists Dan and I grew up with in the 1970’s.

I can recall as a 10-year-old boy a Chris Foss book cover in my uncles bookcase that I would just stare at for ages. It didn’t look painted. I had no knowledge of airbrushes at the time so the art looked almost magically photographic. (The book in question is Masters of the Vortex; part of the E.E. “Doc” Smith’s classic Lensman series… I must read it someday!)

To younger readers seeming unimpressed by this, you have to understand that book covers promised visions of science fiction and fantasy that TV and film at the time could only dream of or copy in a limited way. Shows like Star Trek and the just airing Space:1999 was about as good as it got!

This was like the best CGI and effects ever. In fact, it’s only very recently with the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy have we gone into that colourful space ship universe. (James Gunn presented a ‘Proof of Concept’ for GOTG to Marvel Studios including Chris Foss artwork.) I would dearly love to see a film that had these amazing images in them!

From a teenager to present day, I would fill my bookcases with many of the collected covers from artists such as Jim Burns, Peter Elson, Peter Jones, Bruce Pennington, Bob Eggleton, John Harris, John Berkley, Chris Achilleos and Chris Foss. (Achilleos and Foss have also contributed covers to the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic!)

And whilst I might not have read all the books they illustrated, their covers inspired stories of the imagination, possibly entirely different, and that was the genesis of The Out.

Their work, along with American and European comic artists and their reprints in Heavy Metal Magazine were brainfood to me.

All these great visionaries have influenced the look of The Out and the strip is a love letter to their work and the pleasure it gave a growing artist and writer.

In many ways it’s a strip I’ve been waiting to do all my life to do. It’s tapping into a lot of personal history and influences. It’s a journey I’ve been on many times… in my imagination!

And now you can join us as we go further and wilder… Out There!

You definitely need to join Mark ‘Out there’ – The Out is one of those strips that’s got all the makings of instant classic 2000 AD about it. Thank you so much to Mark for giving us another glimpse into what it takes to get a cover to the Galaxy’s Greatest onto the shelves.

The Out began in Prog 2187 and you can find this current Prog 2193 out now from comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop. It’s a great cover for a truly great strip!

And for more Covers Uncovered from Mark, do check out the post on the first Out cover – Prog 2187.