Monday 27 January 2014

Henry Flint - Dredd in a Tight 'Un!


Poor Joe has had yet another good kicking on the cover of Prog 1866, this time from 'The Big Man' herself,  Low Life bad gal, Aimee Nixon! For those who are a little in the dark, Aimee was a Wally Squad Judge in the Low Life, the baddest, meanest part of the Big Meg.

Recently, the Yakuza initiated a hostile takeover of the Low Life, using information and contacts from the mysterious 'Big Man' in the Meg to gain a foothold. In a bloody battle, Aimee had her arm sliced off and was kidnapped by the Japanese criminals.

Wally Squad Judge Dirty Frank went on a suicide mission to Hondo City to find his friend and former colleague. However, when he did, he discovered that Aimee had been the 'Big Man' all along and had sold out his beloved city to the Yakuza.

Frank overpowered Aimee and delivered her to back Mega-City One. Here she struck a deal to avoid Titan, as long as she gave up her Yakuza secrets. However, it looks like the Justice Department wasn't in the bargaining mood after all...

Henry Flint, artist on the series had a whale of a time, saying "I'm loving Titan, I had so much fun with Rob's script!" It shows too; below is Henry's rough for the cover, absolutely crackling with atmosphere...

Titan Shambles.

And here, as if by magic, is the finished cover. Henry says the cover is 'a mixture of acrylics and computer colour,' hopefully not using the destructive method he used for his previous cover...
 

Dredd never did want to appear on the Celebrity Enema Show.
 
Finally, here's what the design droids did with the image, nice!

Dredd loses a bionic contact lens...
 
Titanic thanks, as ever to Henry for once again supporting the blog. Definitely a contender for cover of the year this one! To see more of Henry's work, go to http://henryflint.wordpress.com/

Sunday 19 January 2014

Clint Langley - What does the Bot Say?


BIG JOBS! It's bot on bot action on this stunning cover by the mighty Clint Langley. The Langley droid is absolutely knocking to out of the park in the prog at the minute, with artwork that evokes memories of classic Bisley and Walker's stints of the Warriors, mixed with his own inimitable style. The subtle blend of digital with black and white inks is genius, I can't wait to see this one collected.

This cover of this one is somewhat misleading, where the action on the image doesn't quite reflect what happens in the prog. However, I don't have a problem with it when it's as Zarjaz as this!

Below are Clint's awesome inks, look at all those wires, dirt and other little details on that! I feel sorry for the colourist, oh...

Mars Brawl 

And here is the cover with initial colours, lovely!

Mongrol and Mek-Quake play Rock, Paper, Chainsaw!

And here's the final image with a smattering of Clint's signature digital effects. Absolutely smushing!

"Knock, knock!" Who's there?" "LARAAAAAA!" "Lara who?" "Lara detail on this cover, isn't there?" - I'll get me coat...

Finally, here's how the prog looked on the shelves, a treat for those who like speech bubbles on their prog!

A typical conversation in the ABC Warriors house.

Huge, ABC Warrior sized thanks to Clint for sending these images. We've had some stunning covers in 2014 already and I'm sure this is going to be up there with the best! See more of Clint's work at his site here and his Facebook page here!

Thursday 2 January 2014

Henry Flint - Titanfall!


Welcome to the first post of 2014 and who better to kick us off than the Magnificent Henry Flint? The artist is delivering the goods on the first major Dredd story of the year, the eight part Titan!

Dredd fans will be aware that Titan, the sixth moon of Saturn, houses a penal colony for the very worst of the worst... bent judges. Notable inmates have included Judge Grice, who led an inmate revolt in Purgatory, Ex-Chief Judge Sinfield and, of course, Rico Dredd.
  
"You're damn right I'm dangerous!"

"He ain't heavy..."

It's a, it's a, it's aaaa... it's a Sin(field)

When contact is lost with the prison Hershey sends Dredd to find out why. Of course, she doesn't send him alone and Dredd is accompanied by a crack team of Space Marines supervised by their brash commander Austin (far left on the cover;) SJS Judge with a grudge Gerhart and disgraced ex-warder of the facility, ex-Judge Mcintosh. Sounds like a recipe for disaster!

Over to Henry to tell us about the cover "I tried a weird method on this, which was the same method I  used this years 2000ad free comicbook day cover..." Hopefully, I'll have more on this soon!

Mmmmm, munce!

"After inking the covers they were scanned. Then, I fully painted over the original inks in acrylics pretty much destroying them, deliberately going over the black lines. Once I'd scanned in the painted covers it was a matter of using photoshop to add the black inks as a separate layer over the top."

Out of Earth's jurisdiction, Dredd was able to urinate in public without reprisals.

"The acrylics didn't scan very well so they were livened up with various controls on Photoshop. The method proved to be very time consuming and destroyed the original so don't think I'll be doing it again in the future." Well, as a punter the colours are ace so it was worth the effort. I'm sad that the origin inks were sacrificed though!

"Pigs in Spaaaaaaace!" Sorry!

Long term fans will remember that this isn't Henry's first crack at Titan, he was cover artist for several of Big Finish's audio dramas, including number 6 - Trapped on Titan...

He wuz framed

And here's how it looks on your shelf, good punnage from Tharg there!

A Titanic battle awaits

HUGE thanks to the lovely droid that is Henry Flint, I'm really enjoying the story up to now and can't wait to see where it goes. I wonder if Sinfield is implicated?