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 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.

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, celebrating the new series from David Hine & Boo Cook, the cover is all about Void Runners with Boo giving it the full-on psychedelic sci-fi treatment!

In Void Runners it’s time to discover a substance like no other, a harsh galactic regime reliant on its supply, a captain and her crew given an offer they can’t refuse, and a revolution that can’t be stopped!

It’s an eight-episode psychedelic sci-fi series following Captain Shikari and their crew of alien misfits on the search for Kali’s Dust – the drug that essentially holds the universe together. But if and when they find it, will Shikari fulfil their mission and take it back to the rulers of the Federation or have they got other plans? Well, that’s to be discovered in the pages of this latest out there sci-fi adventure in the pages of 2000 AD. Strap in folks, this is one that Boo describes as ‘a hallucinogenic space manual on how it’s a real pain in the arse to live full of hate.’

Now, over to Boo Cook for the making of a very special cover for the debut of a very special new strip…

BOO COOK: As this cover was intended for a brand new cosmic sci-fi strip, I wanted to try and give it an epic film poster vibe in the vein of the old Star Wars trilogy paintings and various Drew Struzan posters where you have a montage featuring all the different players in the story.

Scale of characters is to be played with in these ventures so I used the different scalings of the characters to aid the composition. It had to be a cosmic piece but I also wanted to focus it and have the main character projecting forth so I added a couple of sidebars and the flat width of the Subjugator’s hammerhead ninja headpiece worked great for a potential text zone.

Having paid attention to much of the current debate surrounding A.I. generated art I purposely decided that this cover needed to be a fully organic acrylic painting. I’m not strictly against AI as such – it’s something of an inevitability at this point but some incredible artists I know are already losing their jobs in various industries as a result. Also, most of what I’ve seen created by AI, whilst very slick, seems to lack soul and real emotion which tends to leave me feeling somewhat sickly and bewildered. While I’m not exactly railing against it, I figured a good standpoint to take would be to swerve all my creative endeavours towards the organic and visceral – capitalise on my own human element, hope that it’s recognised as such and therefore an un-reproducible commodity in itself…

With all this in mind I foraged out some great figure reference for Captain Shikari and stretched the image so I had a real nice lanky figure to work from. The greyscale rough was banged together in Photoshop so I could shift things about easily, then I sent it off to Tharg for approval.

I think he pretty much said ‘go for it’ so I lightboxed my rough onto a piece of A3 Bristol Board using various fine liner pens, embellishing the details as I went for a more finished look and threw in some solid blacks. After that, I taped it to a wood panel and began to add a deep purple wash over the line work.

Boo sent over a load of incredible bits of artwork which we’ve added in as galleries through this Covers Uncovered. But the gallery process cruelly crops some of them, which is why you can find them in all their full-size glory at the end of this piece!

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It’s nice to get the initial wash good and dark but without burying the guide inks.

Once that was dry I was quite keen to start introducing some of that psychedelic space jazz, so I started with the Pleroma jellyfish entity and its crazy glowing ‘nubules’ which led into adding the kozmik sky background with a few stars etc.

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It was starting to take shape but I like to get some of the important key areas in early so I have plenty of time to assess and correct them if needs be during the course of the painting. I think Moondog’s disapproving smirk was first to go in followed by Shikari’s dazzling dayglo yellow skin.

The keen-eyed will twig that in the strip she has constantly morphing skin tones based loosely on the Blue-Ringed Octopus but aside from being insanely time-consuming in real paints I thought there was a chance it might confuse readers.

This would be the first time many people would see the new character and I didn’t want anyone to immediately be presented with a ‘what’s going on with her skin? it’s all blotchy… is that a weird print anomaly?’ confusion so I abbreviated it to straight yellow here. She can morph it at will using sub-dermal chromatophores so it’s fair to say she can go sans pattern where required… FACT!

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Then it was a case of filling in all the remaining areas – I think the freaky carapace of the Ankorite came next. Weirdly, this was influenced partially by images of Heidi Klum’s horrific human worm fancy dress costume which did the rounds on the Internet recently – I mean hats off to her she knows how to cosplay!

Slowly all the areas went in plus some final tweaks with Prismacolor pencils – I think the entire painting took about 6 days in all which is pretty lengthy but I seriously enjoyed every minute of it.

The last element to be added was the stony tones of the sidebars. I was very tempted to leave them purple but was glad I didn’t as a few weeks after I finished the piece a gorgeous Mark Harrison cover for The Out appeared with a shockingly similar composition with purple sidebars no less! Obviously, there was no way he could’ve seen my painting and vice versa, just a crazy coincidence based I guess on the idea of a film poster vibe and a composition to propel the action forwards.

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One of the toughest stages of doing a real painting for publication is the scanning. I scanned it at home and the colours were absolutely murdered by my scanner and I started to panic a bit.

Cue the amazing Michael at Prints Regent repro shop in Eastbourne! He scanned it beautifully and I was relieved (to say the least) so massive props to him!

It’s quite easy to see the difference in colours from these phone pics to the final scanned image – there’s always going to be some level of compromise going from analogue to digital but thanks to Michael I was very happy to go to print with it.

Here’s some close-ups of the finished piece and finally a pic of my paint palette which had become a strange cosmic brown by the end…

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If I do any more covers I fully intend to keep it organic.

Eventually, I’d love to do the strip work inside with real paints but at the mo’, time constraints mean I have to keep the colouring process digital. But I do intend to experiment with a short strip to see if I can speed the process up. At least it’s my fallible human brain making the decisions…

Oh, we think Tharg will be wanting more covers from you Boo! He knows great art when he sees it after all!

So there you go, thanks so much to Boo for sending that along, particularly as he was under pressure of deadlines – and you know you don’t want to get on the wrong side of TMO when it comes to deadlines! You can find the first episode of Void Runners right now in 2000 AD Prog 2334 wherever you pick up your weekly dose of the Galaxy’s Greatest, from comic shops, newsagents, and 2000 AD web shop.

For more from Boo, there’s a couple of Covers Uncovered pieces that he’s done for us – Prog 2188 & Prog 2305 and then there’s three interviews – Death Cap and Blunt with TC Eglington, plus one for Judge Dredd: The Pitch (Prog 2302) with Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt.

You can find him online at www.instagram.com/boocook and his musical outpourings with bands Motherbox, Forktail (with fellow art droid Simon Davis), and his solo work under the name of Owlmask can be found on the Menk Records.  

Now, as promised – all those full-sized, un-cropped Boo Cook images… ENJOY!

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 unmistakable art of Mark Harrison on the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2333 – it’s the finale of Book 3 of The OUT!

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Over the course of three books of perfect space opera adventures, Dan Abnett and Mark Harrison have shown us the journey of photojournalist Cyd Finlea as she explores what it means to be human so far from Earth, way, way out in space. And now it’s all coming to an end… well, for now at least, as we’ve reached the end of Book 3 with the climactic meeting of Cyd and the proto-Tankinar.

Book 4 is coming soon, but until then, we have one last time to settle back and let The OUT’s Mark Harrison take us through the absolute beauty of a cover that you can see on the front of Prog 2333 from 24 May.

Are you ready? Then we’ll let him begin…

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves”- William Shakespeare.

MARK HARRISON: Okay so… How about a bit of Alphonse Mucha? Lovely stuff and why not? If he was embraced by the Hippie culture of the 60s and repurposed for poster art he’s good enough for the galaxy’s greatest comic! 

Also, I had a sheet metal print of his art on my kitchen wall for years. Selling soap I think. I dreamed a version with a girl wearing aviators with the Universe in her head. 

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Maybe that’s why I’ve had this image in my head since before Dan and I dreamed up The Out. It seems familiar, as if I’ve seen it before… 

It was always there as part of Cyd’s make-up, before Cyd even had a name or strip. It was part of the promo art I pitched.  

That image in the style of Mucha seemed like a good fit so when Tharg surprised me with an unexpected request for a final cover for Book 3 I thought let’s get this image out there.  

It’s supposed to represent that wanderlust ideal of freedom, The Big (Night) Sky of stars in the eyes of the beholder, windows into the soul, you are not just star stuff but the stuff of stars, One with the Universe. 

I wanted to capture in the face of Cyd (our hero) the wonder of the cosmos, the smile of awesome.  

Big headshot, reflective shades. Space background. Simple image. 

Easy, right?

Wrong! 

I agonised over a big head or head and shoulders, two versions as you can see here. (I had Matt choose in the end).

That was a tie-in with the strip, where Dan and I had transported and transformed Cyd Finela from this insignificant speck of human being out in the backwaters of the galaxy to holding court in the Capital world chambers of a galactic United Worlds, towering over all thanks to a spore generated 3-D modeling representation.  Her significance had also outstripped her diminutive size.  Here she seems to dwarf spaceships.

But she wanted none of this attention, none of the grandeur, she was trying to escape back to The Out, back to being of no consequence again. The book concludes with her facing her demons, cutting ties with the past and forging her own way in the Universe once again.  

The image represents that ideal of freedom, new frontiers, of escape at warp speed with no baggage of the past  (but of course – Bag itself).  

Hopefully, it speaks to all of us who, for whatever reasons, just want to “go out” and free ourselves from terrestrial influences. 

A motivational poster for infinite possibility. 

So the cover design needed to reflect that pure desire, being bright, simple, clean line work, with minimal detail to weigh it down. Barely any tone, a light wash of colour, the contrasting density of the fussy space background acting as a tapestry of interstellar possibility. 

Another late change was giving a sense of motion or “whoosh” reflected in her glasses; a stargate maybe,  forming in front of Cyd, streaking light patterns, ready to whisk her off to new adventures, tripping the light fantastic. (Now THAT I have seen before in the visor of a motorbike helmet) 

I agonised over background colors again… (Also spaceships or no spaceships?)

But again, I defaulted to simple white.

The white doesn’t mean anything,  it’s just white…

Although no… wait a second…maybe it’s…  

No, it’s just white…   

So, onwards to Book 4…  

Sail on silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine

And that was where Mark ended his latest transmission, with the strains of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water in our ears.

Or at least he thought it was the end – only to suddenly realise he wasn’t quite finished. So, as part of Mark’s continuing exposure of readers to art and artists they may not have been previously aware of… he added this…

MARK HARRISON (again): Moebius!

At some point early in the cover’s development, I did consider digitally painting the whole thing like a Lt. Blueberry painting by Jean ‘Moebius’  Giraud (THE undisputed genius of the French fantasy comic scene and a massive influence on science fiction and fantasy comic art and cinema). That seemed like hard work and would have involved re‑learning how to paint digitally in Photoshop which I hadn’t done in a while so it fell by the wayside. But that enigmatic smile remained. 

So, it’s an excuse to give a shout-out to the amazing body of work by the great Moebius (who I brushed past in a crowded room once. True story. Okay, I was too shy to talk to him and I don’t know any French other than: “What’s the time?” – which I didn’t want to go with). 

He was a formative part of my understanding of the possibilities of comic art and my comic-collecting life as a teen.  Such unparalleled flights of fantasy that were the Golden Age of fantasy comics through the 60s up until the 80s. An unfettered, boundless, free flow of expression and imagination that is sadly diminished in today’s comic scene.  

His take on the creative process is similar to mine on The Out, trying to divorce myself from a human-centric viewpoint, removing or expanding beyond that narrow bandwidth of convention and trying to see the universe with an alien eye. Of course that has to be tempered with the practicalities of needing to be printed in a 12+ Western comic, but I always believe your imagination should aim for the stars. And if you fall short through necessity at least you might get the moon. 

Free yourself from today and embrace the worlds of tomorrow…. from yesterday with a bit of Moebius!  (In all real comic fans collections!) 

So there you go, the end of The OUT Book 3 and a perfect cover to go with it. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, The OUT is one of the best things to come out of 2000 AD in the last decade. Hell, it’s one of the best things to come out of 2000 AD full stop – and as we all know, the Prog’s had some truly zarjaz things in it over the years! Truly, in years to come, we’ll be talking about The OUT in the same hushed tones reserved for Halo Jones et al – it really is that good. And you should all be reading it.

Thanks once more to Mark for sending along the latest in what are always both wonderful reads and fascinating insights into the mind of the artist. I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting to sit for an evening in a quiet pub with a few drinks and just chat to him about art and what it means to him. That would just be a fabulous night.

You can find all his previous Covers Uncovered work here –  Prog 2187, Prog 2193, Prog 2251, Prog 2254, Prog 2261, and Prog 2314. And be sure to go back and read the interview with Dan Abnett and Mark Harrison all about The OUT right here.

And of course, you need to have the first collection of The OUT adorning your bookshelves. You can pick that up from the 2000 AD web shop.

You can find 2000 AD Prog 2333 wherever you pick up your weekly dose of Ghafflebette comics, including the 2000 AD web shop from right now – today.

Now, your bonus Mark moments…

He didn’t just mention the genius that was Jean ‘Moebius’ Girard, but sent along a link to an excellent primer article from Retrozap, Moebius: The Elements of an Artist. So, I’ve added in some of Moebius’ incredible fantasy artwork from that article. But first, seeing as Mark specifically referenced Jean Girard’s early masterpiece, Blueberry, and how he had toyed with the idea of drawing this latest The OUT cover with digital colouring to evoke Girard’s painted colours on that magnificent series, we’ll begin with a few Girard Blueberry pieces…

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!

What an incredible first few years in 2000 AD publishing history for the newly constructed Artdroid Toby Willsmer! Not many artists could claim not only winning the Art Stars competition, but then going on to set pulses pounding with covers and stories, including the Robo-Hunter strip in the zombie takeover tale The Darkest Judge and Cadet Dredd in Prog 2325

The Willsmer model is a classic 2000 AD artdroid, with some modern tweaks and upgrades. Built on an refurbished Bisley Mk1 chassis, augmented with some advanced Emond software patches then let loose with a host of bespoke subroutines of his own, he is a formidable addition to Tharg’s roster. He is quickly cementing a reputation for kinetic, literally explosive artwork that is irresistible to terrans and kills all known forms of Thrill Sucker dead. Toby has completed the cover of 2000 AD Prog 2332 (available 17 May) and what a stunner it is!

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Over to Toby to tell you about his overall concept:

TOBY WILLSMER: I wanted to capture the moment just after Dredd had dealt with his perps and slid to a halt on his Lawmaster. I surrounded him with shootout carnage and burning stuff as a secondary light source and to add movement in there.

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Rough and colour scheme
With the initial concept locked in, Toby got to work. He said “I came up with a fairly detailed rough idea and my initial thoughts on a colour scheme. Then sent them over to Matt to run his eyes over them.”

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Linework and initial lighting and shadows
“Once Matt approved the idea, I went ahead and drew up the detailed linework and added some basic shadows and textures.” And what amazing linework it is, wow!

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Initial colours
“From there I’ll head into the base colours, these help me to define where light and shadow will fall for the overall image. I wanted the city to be loose and dirty in the background and Dredd to be much more defined in the image bringing him to the front.”

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Main part details
The image is really starting to pop now as Toby begins painting in the details. “As I wanted Dredd and his Lawmaster to have contrast lighting, I painted him first. This way I could balance the lighting and detail in the rest of the piece as I worked through it.”

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Details to the city
The final scrotnig painting. “I didn’t do much more on the city. Only detailing some parts, adding neon lights and some moonlight details on the buildings. At this stage, I’ll add all the small details/highlights to the whole image.”

I’m sure you’ll agree that this cover is a triumph! Thank you very much to Toby for sending the images and explaining his process.

You can get hold of the Willsmer Droid’s latest cover from anywhere the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold from 17 May, including at the 2000 AD web shop!

There’s lots more of Toby’s work available to marvel at online, including some outstanding 2000 AD pieces, so be sure to visit his website at willsmer.com. Highlights include this devilishly dark Judge Death bust…

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This Mean Machine poster…

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And these glorious ABC Warriors images, truly zarjaz!