Ben Willsher - Hot Karl!



"Hotshot!" I've been dying to write this one up as I love, love, love this image! Ben Willsher is easily one of my favourite of this generation's Dredd artists and once again he's delivered in spades! As well as being used for the cover of Megazine 351, this will be the cover for the American reprint of Uprise, coming out on 29th October. Remember, the Underbelly sold out TWICE so you'd best order now creeps!

Over to Ben to tell us more about the cover "I was very excited to get this chance to work on the 'Movie' Dredd- Like all Dredd fans, I loved the film and long to see another one, fingers crossed (well, while I'm not drawing, that is!)"

How's this for a scoop, Ben said "I nearly had a chance to work WITH the Movie Dredd - That being Karl Urban, himself! Karl had agreed to write a Dredd tale for the free comic book day in 2012, but unfortunately being the extremely busy and talented man he is, he simply didn't have the time. This was a great shame, but luckily the extremely busy and talented Matt Smith stepped in and wrote the wonderful Jimps Club."

"Anyway, jump ahead a couple of years and with a fantastic Prequel and Sequel comic under the belts of Messrs Smith, Flint, and Wyatt, here we are, I finally get my chance to have a go at drawing that amazing new body armour."

"First stage as always was the rough concept..."



 Urban Scrawl

"Once the rough was okayed by TMO. I set about drawing the final Black and White art. I inked in all the art, but left a roughed outline in pencil of some of the wall details that will be in the background. I knew I was going to paint these in, so I didn't want them to have solid black lines."

Dredd investigates Chopper's morbid phase...

"I then tidied up the ink lines in Photoshop to make them as crisp as I could. At this stage I took out the pencil lines as these will be a template for the Background paintwork. So they were stored as a separate layer for me to work on."



A heavy armoured special cop!

"The final stage was colouring. I really wanted to capture that grim and grimy feel that the film had to its urban (no, not Karl) environment."



Dredd's diarrhoea struck at a very inopportune time!

"I had an absolute blast drawing this, and I'd love to do more of these movie inspired Dredd images, so hopefully Tharg will continue to commission more of these tales...Hm, Death or Mean Machine, Oh Mighty One???" 

All of the above please Tharg! Huge thanks to Ben for sending the images and blurb for a truly cool cover. If you want a special SIGNED copy of the comic, get yourself along to Forbidden Planet on Saturday 1st November between 1pm-2pm where Ben and series artist Paul Davidson will be signing the Diamond UK Exclusive Edition - wooooooh!