Steven Austin - The Insensitive Klegg

Congratulations to the mighty Steven Austin, worthy winner of April's 2000AD Message Board Art Competition! The theme was 'The Day the Law Died' and saw a dazzling array of entries from 'Where's Wally' style Klegg scenes to Judge Fish-Eyed dioramas to Klegg Propaganda posters, really highlighting the creativity on the board.

Steve kindly gave us an insight into the process behind his winning entry, he said "As soon as the theme was announced I knew I wanted to create a Dredd Vs Klegg piece. I re-read the story and it struck me how much Cal was like Joaquin Phoenix's character in Gladiator - I know Cal was based on Caligula...but...I've never seen it!" Hmmmm, maybe he should, there are some erm... very memorable scenes!

"Anyway I thought it would be cool to have them battling it out in an arena and so set to work on my thumbnails."

"Thumbnails are usually drawn very quickly using an HB at about 5cm x 7cm. I had a few ideas but two stood out for me in particular.  I decided upon the circular composition of Dredd and the Klegg...."

"Open wide, Creep!"

 Dredd and Grampus always got competitive when playing Twister.

"Once I had decided upon this I set about sketching out a larger rough, very loose, but getting in the tones and general feel for the finished piece."

"At this stage I was torn as I tend to bounce between working digitally and traditionally but decided I wanted to do this traditionally as it would be more in keeping with the original story/artwork - plus I was missing getting ink all over the doors around the house and being chastised for it by my better half!"

"The rough went onto the light box, I then trace very lightly using a 2H pencil, really I just use the lightbox to get the basics down and then switch it off and continue to work in 2H making any changes to the piece."

Sadly it was too late, Grampus had eaten Dredd lollipop.

"Once I was happy with the 2H version I hit it with an HB - these are my final pencils."

"Finish him!"

"Once the pencils are finished I use a Pentel brush pen to ink the piece, I love this tool, it takes some getting used to as it has quite a long brush but once you got the knack you can get some really nice lines with it."

"Once the inks were complete, I scanned it in. Job done!!!" Job done and compo won in fact, what a brilliant entry!

Slicey, Slicey, oncey, twicey!
Fang and claw will kill Dredd nicely!

Fighty, fighty, punchy, bitey!
Dredd will kick this Klegg to shitey!

Huge, Fergie-sized thank you's to Steve for sending the images and text, really interesting stuff from a real talented artist. Lets hope we see a lot more from him in the future!