A cover special for the ladies! What more could you want than smouldering Dante cover by Paul Marshall? His recent head shot cover featuring PJ Maybe was was genuinely chilling, completely capturing the evil essence of the character. He's certainly done it again with Dante, giving us an aged, yet completely cocky version of our favourite swashbuckling Russian rogue!
Paul said "The general idea for this cover was quite simple really... Tharg asked for a head and shoulders close up of Nikolai Dante giving us his charming rogue smile and tipping the cheeky wink to the reader."
Below is Paul's sketch which was sent to the mighty one for approval...
He continues "After getting the okay for the comp it was just a question of getting on with it because time was tight. It was needed within a few days so I couldn't hang about!"
And below we can see Paul's impeccable inks. "The the crossed swords behind Dante were added to frame the character and give extra depth and a bit of detail. I also gave a spotlight effect to tie the design elements together."
Although the final cover was coloured by series colourist Gary Caldwell, Paul still likes to do a coloured rough. He explains "The colour rough is just to give me an idea as to the balance of the design once coloured, it has no bearing on the finished colouring. It's purely for my own view, to give an idea of how it will/could feel when finished..."
And below are Gary's beautiful colours. He's been doing an outstanding job on Simon Fraser's art in the strip and has really done a top notch job on Paul's work here.And there you have it, one smouldering Soviet stud!A HUGE thank you to Paul for taking the time to send the images and commentary. In my opinion he's one of 2000AD's the unsung heroes who always turns in an excellent job. I look forward to hopefully seeing more of his work in the prog soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment