Part of the many joys of doing this blog is seeing the diverse ways that Tharg's talented artists produce their work. A relatively new name in the world of 2000AD is Neil Roberts and I think this guy is definitely one to watch!
Here, Neil explains how he went from the sketch below to the amazing digital beauty above!
"This is the basic 3D model of Judge Dredd, textured and wireframe. This was achieved using a variety of 3D programs and Zbrush2"
"The final rendered image before compositing it into the Photoshop file..." 
"This is called a ZDepth pass – this means you can control many element with this image: fog, falloff, depth cueing and all sorts of boring technical stuff."
"This is Is the textured cityscape in the scene..."
"The cityscape from a distance – you can see the overall layout is a bit random – it just has to look good from the final camera angle."
"Below is the final rendered cityscape before placing into the final image."
"The Zdepth pass – useful for dropping in fog and placing explosions in the scene whilst in Photoshop, without having to re-render everything."
"The Photoshop file with everything dropped in place and all ready for the final paintover." 
Aaaaand finally "The final image painted up with a few adjustment layers to tie all the layers together."
Wow! I find it fascinating how producing artwork has changed in such a small period of time, it blows my tiny mind!Neil is hard at work on another cover for the galaxy's greatest and I for one can't wait! Please check out his Blog here as it tells us more about the cover and shows off some of his other wonderful work! Mega thanks to Neil for sending the images and explaining everything to me!
Its always very interesting to see the process. I know D'Israeli uses 3D graphics software to help with his work (and also shows the way it can be used effectively on his blog) and, while I'd have thought it'd add to the mount of time such projects take you can't argue with the results. However, as it was his first gig for Tharg he clearly wanted to pull out all the stops to get it perfect.
ReplyDeleteThere is a bit more on his blog. Always fun to see creators posing for their own art to get everything right!!
http://skinnyelbows.blogspot.com/2009/08/cover-judge-dredd-megazine.html
It even made the local paper good to see this cover was the culmination of a life long interest in 2000AD:
http://skinnyelbows.blogspot.com/2009/09/local-news-for-local-people.html
It sounds like Tharg is giving him more work and I think I have said it on the 2000AD forums before but, given Neil Roberts' WH40k noel covers, I'd love to see him do an Insurrection Meg cover at some point.
Also don't forget that Neil has also been doing quite a bof small press work and he has something in the next Something Wicked (as do I!!).
http://comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=20032