Darren Douglas - Schnorbitz and Pieces

Now here's a new 2000AD artist I'm really excited about! Darren Douglas has provided this high-octane wraparound cover for Prog 1815 which is eye poppingly, teeth shattering gorgeous! His background is in computer games, as a designer for Sony but he has recently made the move into professional comics. Having worked on high speed and explosive games such as theWipeout series, F1, Motorstorm and Killzone 2 it comes as little suprise that we get this fast paced, all action cover!

Darren said "The cover is pretty exciting for me as it's my first officially published comics work. I've been drawing comics since I was a kid (who hasn't?!) and it's been eating up all my spare time for the last 14 years or so with growing intensity (the day job being concept work for computer games.) It's the place where I exorcised all the demons of the discarded ideas that were too racy, too idiotic or too 'out there' for Sony's sensitive disposition. (Not that I'm saying they're wrong, mind you, my own comics never made a penny so they must know something I don't!)"

So the idea of doing a cover, featuring Dredd no less, for the first piece out the gate was ridiculously exciting. (And no small bit daunting too!) The brief was simple enough: 'Dredd racing down the street, city in the background and a sense of speed.' Loose enough to be fun, tight enough to not have me spinning my wheels in confusion."

"I put together a few thumbnails that afternoon, and, from your blog, I spotted some wraparounds which excited me." 

I was thrilled to discover that Darren had used this very blog for reference! He says "I found your blog while I was researching a little on past covers in preparation, it was a big help!" See? There IS a reason for this blog!

 "I love the landscape format, especially the surprise of finding that extra element to the image on the back cover. Another couple of thumbs from something that occurred to me that night, later, and I mailed Tharg..." 

I couldn't agree more. And here are those thumbs, they're wonderfully kinetic, his Wipeout and F1 origins being very evident...

Cover 1A - Some of Darren's famed spaceship designs in the background here.

Cover 1B - MOTS? Oh, Slow!

Cover 2 - Dredd on a mission...

Cover 3A - Dangerous driving cost lives - yours!

Cover 3B - The Grevious Tale of Joe Dredd and the Dead Left in his Wake...

Cover 4A - The Dead Cat and Rat version!

Cover 4B - Greasy thugs! The full version of the chosen thumb...

 

Cover 5A - I love this idea, Dredd gunning towards you at the start of the prog...

Cover 5B - And speeding off at the end, brilliant!

With such a plethora of options, Tharg went for no 4. Darren says "I was very pleased that he chose, not only one of the wraparounds, but the composition that I liked best. The one with the greasy thugs on the back cover. The only request being that the dead cat and the rat be replaced with a discarded robot which I was happy to change (as I'd been finding them bloody tricky to draw for some reason!)" Pah, calls himself an artist!?! Everyone can draw dead cats with rats in 'em...

Darren continues "I blew up the thumb, well, more accurately, I WOULD have blown up the thumb on the photocopier and printed it out to retain the proportions. However as I was still setting up my home office having done all my previous work on Sony kit, was the old fashioned drawing a grid and enlarging it, to blow up the thumb. That blow up became the rough template for the the pencils which went really smooth for once. Tharg 'Okayed' them with just minor tweak to update the gun and away I went in Painter."

"Initial work went really smoothly, then the second guessing and the comparison with the image in the minds eye began to torture, as usual! The thumb had some overlooked issues with the scale of the baddies, which I addressed, mostly, but is still a bit off. To fix it further would have lost the dynamic composition and to shrink the Judge farther back to fix it further would have made the cover less impressive. Hopefully the sense of mayhem carries it off and distracts enough to get away with it."

 Note the Lawgiver Mk 1, ah memories!

Next Darren discusses his colouring techniques "The palette I start out with is rarely the one I like at the end, partly an evolution, partly a lack of preparation, partly just getting tired of the colours over the course of working on it! Hampered somewhat by only having Photoshop (which I use for final tweaking of overlay layers etc) available on my older PC with its rickety screen, I kept having to back and forth the image on a memory stick to the nicer PC to check every tweak!"

The last detail pass added some items that, to be honest, I thought I would get asked to remove! You see, in every game we did for Sony, there would be silly little references and asides (see Wipeout and Motorstorm images below), which would be removed by various sensitive departments down the line, afraid of offending and outraging (heaven forbid anyone smokes or scratches their nuts while they blow the crap outta ya with a bazooka!)

Now I knew 2000AD had balls of titanium and I took heart from all the funny references I'd seen over the years. But to play it safe, in adding the glib references to Schnorbitz and Ace of Base (the worst thing I can think of to survive into a futuristic dystopia!) I made sure that they could be easily removed and also gave Tharg an alternate version where it was all motion blurred away."

 Above: The censor pleasing blurred version...

 For our younger readers, Schnorbitz the dog was the funnier comedy partner of 1970's commedian Bernie Winters. I'm terrified that Schorbitz will become the next shamed 70's celebrity in operation Yewtree... 

 Eric Estrada played motor cycle cop Ponch in CHiPs and is probably related to Eustice Fargo in some way...

"To my great delight, not a tweak was requested and the un-blurred version accepted. Oh I thought, all that will probably be illegible on the final mag. Nope, my copy arrived and it's all too legible which makes me wish I'd made the text under 'Ace of Base are back' which read: 'The 'Dear God No!' tour' a little more prominent lest folk think I love them as much as I love Erik Estrada and Schnorbitz. Let's be clear, there's no excuse for Ace of Base, none!" Hmmmm, I think the artist doth protest too much...

The balls of titanium published version - Go Tharg!

So there we have it, the first wraparound and first Dredd cover of 2013 and it's a cracker. As I said at the start of this piece, I'm very excited about Darren's work. Please do yourself a favour and take a look at his gallery on the cghub, there's a stunning mix of illustration and sequential work that is bursting with energy, creativity and humour.

Here are some my (many) favourite illustrations from his gallery, firstly this riff on The A Team for the Motorstorm game...

 

"I ain't getting in no Dinosaur suit fool!" 

Still with Wipeout, yep, that's a giant robot fighting a car and biplanes. What not to like?

King Car-n?

Followed by this hilarious billboard from the Wipeout game. 'Slime Creatures from Uranus featuring the Village people?' I wonder if this got past Sony's censor?

 

 D.I.S.C.Ooooooooh!

 I really like the composition of this next one...

 

  Last Stand - I love this...

And a personal piece which I suspect this is a cover for Darren's Space Dude series...

The wonderfully title 'Tranny'

Which brings me onto Darren's sequential work. I adore these black and white pages, they evoke memories of 2000AD past masters such as Redondo and Gibson mixed with the modern trappings of Frazer Irving, Mark Harrison and even a touch of Eric Powell. I do hope we see some of the artist's work in as well as on the prog...

 "Gonna kick 10 types of pasty off your crusty carcasses!" Some of us would pay good money for that!

 His colour works' not too shabby either...

So, an exciting new prospect for 2000AD, I have a feeling were going to see a lot more from the Douglas Droid in the Galaxy's greatest and that's fine by me!