Friday 11 September 2009

Dave Taylor - Super Circuits!

It’s a well known fact that other than Tharg, 2000AD is ‘staffed’ by numerous droids that have been constructed by the Betelgeusian editor’s own green hands. One can only assume that when he came to make the Dave Taylor droid, Tharg must have popped some extra RAM in the Mega-City One Rendering Circuits as Dave is celebrated throughout the galaxy for his brain-frazzling Mega-City vistas and his amazing technological design work. Don’t just take my ill-informed word for it, super artdroid D’Israeli rates Dave as “the best current Mega-City artist” – high praise indeed!

However, the Taylor droid is not just a one trick erm… robot! His figure work and portraits are amazing too. Just look at the talent oozing out of his trademark crowd scenes in the recent Dredd tale, High Spirits. Simply stunning – oh, you get extra points if you spot dead bad guys from Dredd’s past in there too. For example, in the panel below you can clearly see The Raggedy Man to Judge Lamia’s left and Filetooth, from the Cosmic Punks Gang, on her right:

Bolland’s famouse Filetooth cover image:
I am chuffed to present all of Dave’s fantastic covers to date. At the top of this post have have Dave’s yummy Prog 1653, showcasing his awesome Photoshop painting skills. The cover depicts a grizzled, morose-looking Dredd who's haggard face is testament to the recent distressing events in his world. Wonderful stuff.

Below we have the inks and finished versions of the Anderson inspired cover of Megazine 236. You can read his commentary of how the cover came together here.

Finally from the Megazine, the Big Robots cover of Meg 261. This was a madcap Anderson tale featuring sentient City Blocks where Dave was able to show his block-drawing skills to their fullest!
Moving on to 2000AD, we have a sketch and the finished cover of Prog 1599, showcasing a blinded Dredd getting ready to throw a wobbly – not to mention a punch or two!

Finally we have the companion pieces to this cover, featuring undead nutcase Rohmer, from the Ecstasy storyline.

As well as being a talented git, Dave is also very generous at sharing his work through his super blog (here) and is currently working on a top secret Batman project. I wonder if he’s swapped his Mega-City Rendering Circuits for Gotham City ones?

Thanks to Dave for the images, you're a star laddie!

1 comment:

  1. Great blog. Loving all this stuff, especially the woks shown in progress. Keep it up! ;-P

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