100the Post Special - Neil Roberts' shows us his hairy, wrinkly, one-eyed chap!

Welcome to the 100th post for 2000AD Covers Uncovered! On this momentous occasion I am delighted to present friend-of-the-blog, Neil Roberts' fantastic cover of Prog 1705, featuring everyone's favourite Wally Squad Judge, Dirty Frank!

This is easily one of my favourite covers this year - the lurid colours, the grime and the swarming flies sum up the character and series perfectly - yet another winner from one of Tharg's star cover droids!

As ever, Neil has been very generous in supplying commentary, sketches, (not at all embarrassing(!)) reference photos and final images. Over to Neil...

"Okay, first up, the thumbnails - where I was going for the pure image, the emotional response (to a dirty old man), bleurgh!"



Hang on to your hats everyone, next follow Neil's glorious reference photos. I always look foward to these when Neil does a cover, remember those infamous dressing gown shots? Back to Neil as he tries to justify his artistic gurning...

"The silly face meant I could look for any interesting shapes and creases, so don't laugh ;) Then it was on to the final paints. I usually go straight to those because, it being a digital painting, it means I can experiment and fix things on the fly. Which I find it a lot quicker than re-drawing and refining the underpainting - time is not an option!"

(If Karl Urban drops out of the Dredd movie we have a ready made substitute!)

Moving swiftly on to the final images! Neil continues "As you can see the first version is a bit flat in the halftone range and I haven't added much texture..."

"This was followed by the final version in which those issues were resolved. Then it was sent to Tharg for the beautiful design work by Simon and Luke - those guys should get muchos credit as they do a great job, week in, week out..."
Yup, as Neil said, Tharg's design droids absolutely excelled themselves here. The logo makes you question your sobriety and the fly on the 2000AD icon sets it all of perfectly. Simply brilliant.
Thanks very, very much to Neil who has once again sent some outstanding images and highly entertaining text. He's a very busy guy and totally up to his (skinny) elbows in work at the moment and it speaks volumes that he has taken the time and effort to send so much for our entertainment. We salute you sir!

Please visit Neil's site and blog to see more Roberts loveliness!