Richard Elson - Jimp Wrist Kit!

 

I apologise for the above pun, I think I may have hit a new low! Superstar Artdroid Richard Elson provides us with this action-packed finale to the Breaking Bud series which sees Dredd up against the mysterious agents of the Time Buraeu. Hmmm, I wonder if John Wagner has plans for these meddling agents in future...?

 

Richard was kind enough to send sketches and the story behind the cover. Over to Richard "I sent over three sketches based on Tharg's original brief, as shown below..." I love that little montage, it's like a mini comic strip in itself or the Slo-mo drug den bust from the Dredd movie! 

 

Sketch 2 - Gaze into the arse of Dredd!

 

"Tharg asked for a modification of the idea in rough 2 - where we could see Dredd's face in a three quarter view. I submitted a revised rough, which was given the go-ahead."  

 

The annual Megacity One water fight.

 

"I scaled the sketch up to begin painting, but was pretty dissatisfied with the Dredd figure as a starting point, so redrew it."

 

 Enter the boys in blue!

 

"I have occasionally experimented with full digital painting and it has never really worked out, but I wanted to give it another shot. Still worried about the strength of the Dredd figure I concentrated on that first and ended up pretty much finishing it before had I even touched the rest of the image." I love all the textures on here...

 

 Good old Dreddy, you can see he leans his teeth twice a day.

 

"I then filled in the background figures, adjusted the lighting on Dredd, and sent the page off for comments..."

 

A shot in the dark!

"Tharg asked me to lighten the background, so that is what you see on the finished cover!"

Just look at those blingging bracelets!

 

And here's how the cover looks on your Progshelf, tremendous!

 

By 2137 the Apple Watch will do all sorts!  

 

Huge, huge thanks to Richard for taking time out of his busy schedule to send the images and text for this explosive cover!

Alex Ronald - Alien Threat!

 

Not many people know this, but the Mighty One suffers from terrible, terrible piles. In fact, they're so bad, he can't sit down and has to levitate. Surprising then, that Mek Quake of all erm... people, was kind enough to treat the Mighty One to a lovely new purple pile cushion. A heart warming image captured by amazing artdroid Alex Rona...

What? That's not right? Oh...  

Right, take 2! Tremble Earthlets, as intrepid artist Alex Ronald goes undercover to give us a revealing expose of disgusting working conditions in the Nerve Centre. Zero hours contracts, Rigellion Hotshots and he constant threat of Mek Quake. Ian Duncan Smith would be proud!

I absolutely adore this cover, it's genius! That Tharg is perfect and you can't beat the ABC Warriors! Mek Quake looks absolutely terrifying here! I would give my right arm to see Alex provide the art on a Meknificent Seven strip.

Over to Alex to tell us about the creation of this cosmic cover "Tharg gave me three options for this one, Tharg controlling electricity bolts, whipping the droids or standing with Mek Quake. Much as option two appealed to my twisted mind I chose option 3 and the chance to do a second ABC warrior after January's Savage cover..."

Here is that wonderful cover for those of you with sort memories...

Alex re-creates that Michael Jackson Pepsi ad... 

Alex continues "First draft had him with a hologram of the 2000ad logo providing some nice up lighting. I dropped this idea because it would have effectively created three logos on the cover and the pose wasn't overly inspired."

Tharg's rubbish firework put him in a  right old huff. 

"After a rummage through past progs I found a nice image by Carlos of Tharg cross legged and levitating above London. This provided the pose I needed to make the image a bit more special."



 "Quaequam Blag! Burt has been messing with the teleport controls again!"

 

 Mek-Quake loved his Tharg toy.

 

"I created both Tharg and Mek Quake within Z Brush and blocked in some background details using custom made and library props."

"These 3D parts are then exported into another package for assembly."

"Humbug!" 

Tharg in mid-poo 

 After eating baked beans, Tharg would actually levitate...

 

 I bet this was a big job...

"Once the scene is composed and camera angle locked down, the elements are saved out as separate layers for painting in Photoshop."



Tharg coughed up the mother of hairballs...

"Originally I had the idea of some Thrill suckers  in there too and built one in 3D, but dropped it because it may have over cluttered the image slightly."

  





 Looks like Alex needs to update his antivirus software...

And here's the finished cover, just beautiful!

 Tharg was chuffed with his raspberry doughnut!

 

And here's how the cover looks in your local thrillmerchant! Love that Betelgeusian green logo, brilliant.  

 

 Tharg holds the recently removed sphincter muscle of an underperforming droid...

 

Another huge, huge thanks to Alex for his continued support with the blog. As ever, it's a great write up and every image is mind blowing, great! I'm sure this is going to be another contender for cover of the year, it's glorious! Be sure to check out Alex's blog for more goodies!



Simon Davis - Roman Vandal!

Prog 1930 sees Slaine MacRoth facing off against a Trojan army, but he didn't think it too many! This beautiful painted piece is brought to us by master painter, Simon Davis, who once again hasn't wasted a stroke. A really confident and masterful painting from the very best in the business.

Below we see Simon's sketches, it looks like the artist had a pretty good idea what he wanted from the off...

 Ouch! Never run with scissors or git big swords!

 



Slaine on the right - put that away! Dirty boy...

 

Gone fishin'

And once again, that wonderful finished piece...



"Mine's bigger than yours..."

 

And here's how the prog looks on your Thrill merchant's shelf...

 

You should see the  size of the marshmallow Slaine is cooking! 

 

Sadly, Prog 1930 sees the departure of friend of the blog Pye Parr. Pye-01 has been a constant supporter of the blog from it's very inception and has been extremely generous with his time and talent. His design work on 2000AD has been nothing short of stunning and I wish him the very, very best of luck in the next stage of his career as a freelance artist/designer and male prostitute.

 

Thanks for everything Pye!  

 

And thanks to the brilliant Simon Davis for sending the images, may his brushes never dry up!



The Hachette Job, Update...

 

The Judge Dredd Mega Collection continues apace, with two fabulously produced hardbacks gracing our shelves per month. I featured Pye Parr's eye catching designs for issues 1 - 3 here and thought I'd play catch up today with issues 4 - 9.

Above, we see a re-working of Brian Bolland's iconic cover of Prog 1505 for the 'Origins' epic which of course, was Wagner and Ezquerra's essential story of the book. This definitive tale sees Dredd in the Cursed Earth, recounting the events that led to the formation of the Justice Department. Essential reading for any Dredd fan.

Also that month, we got 'Shamballa' by Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson, which explores the spiritual side of the Dreddverse...

"Erm... is it the three of hearts?"

Issues 6 and 7 saw 'Mandroid' and 'The Heavy Mob' respectively. Mandroid boasts magnificent artwork by fan favourite Kev Walker as well as some of John Wagner's bleakest writing yet. Such is the talent of Kev Walker, the cover simply features a panel from the strip. The only other time I can recall this happening was with Joe Pineapples' saucy cover of Prog 787, again by Walker...

Return of the living Dredd

'The Heavy Mob' is an eclectic mix of stories focusing on some of the Heavily Armoured Divisions of the Justice Department. The cover of this collection sees a re-working of Dylan Teague's cover to 2000AD Extreme Edition, issue 17...

Someone really needs to vac up... 

Issues 8 features the classic epic 'The Cursed Earth' and naturally features a reworking of Mick McMahon's fan favourite cover of Prog 85...

Dredd always got mouthy after a drink...

Where as number 9 features some of Devlin Waugh's excellent adventures, with this most phallic of covers. Blimey guvnor!



Hmmmm, Pye could have used the Red Eye filter on poor Devlin there...



Soon premium subscribers should be receiving their premium prints, the first by the powerhouse that is Henry Flint, just look at it, a thing of beauty!

 Dredd visits Lilliput City One.

Here's the inks for the piece too...

 



Flint channels his inner Manara with a gratuitous crotch shot, disgusting!

 

I'm working on getting us a 'clean' version of the spine image to ogle, but here's a decent-ish sized view to keep us going for now...

The Unusual Suspects...

 

I'm absolutely loving the Judge Dredd Mega Collection and can't wait to have the full collection groaning on my bookshelf! If you haven't already subscribed, do so now! 



Ryan Brown - Smokin'!

Yes!!! I've been following Ryan Brown's amazing work for a while now so I'm delighted to see him get his own 2000AD cover. Over the last couple of years we've seen him colour the work of heavyweights such as Greg Staples, Simon Bisley and Glenn Fabry but the cover of Prog 1929 is all Ryan, and it's a drokking corker!

Ryan was kind enough to send some zarjaz images and some insight into his process. He said "I start with a few scribbles on paper, very very rough, the kind that goes straight in the bin afterwards so no one ever sees them! Next I get a few reference images or sometimes take my own reference images..."

Ha! Next time Ryan must send some of those! He continues "After that I go straight to painting on Photoshop. I work really rough at first, trying to get the overall shape. It's almost like working in clay rather than lines, if you know what I mean."

So here's Ryan's clay-like rough...



The cover in drunk-o-vision

Ryan continues "I like to paint in Photoshop using the standard brush and try and keep it as close to traditional as possible."

And again, here's that startling finished image, brilliant!

That's the last time the Jehovah's Witnesses will knock on Dredd's door.



Over on his Deviant Art page, Ryan has been delighting us with some outstanding 2000AD related images over the last few months. Below is a gloriously grim headshot of everybody's favourite grump...



 Old Twisty Face
 

And another excellent Dredd, I really like the design of his gloves on this.

 



Dredd is seriously packing here, and I'm not talking about his guns...



Then there's this delightfully trippy Mean Machine and Anderson...

Anderson tried a stint as living furniture after leaving Psi-Div...



And Ryan's newest piece is this astonishing Munch-esque, Judge Death!

 The Sssssssscream

Here's a wonderful image of everyone's sweet transistor, Joe Pineapples rocking a lovely pink bodysuit...

Joe's cyber-mam always stitched a name tag on his jacket

 

Ryan is keen to give props to some of the heavyweight artists he's worked with in the past. He says "I'd like to mention that I've been privileged to work with some of the greats. Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry, Greg Staples, Liam Sharp and Matt Wagner. All of them are incredibly inspiring artists and lovely people."

It would be rude not to celebrate some of those collaborations, so let's start with one of my very favourite Dredd images of recent years, Greg Staples and Ryan's outstanding Lawmaster in the rain cover for IDW's Judge Dredd Year One. This image blows me away every time!

Pissing down again!?! I hope they kept the receipt for Weather Control...

Here's the Apocalypse War themed cover for Year One, issue 2...

Mr Bomb-bastic

 

Glenn Fabry and Ryan worked on this wonderful Rogue Trooper cover for IDW, cor...



Tharg's blue eyed boy

 

And the two worked together again on the Rad to the Bone cover of MEeg 348...



 Dredd's masseuse was a bit heavy handed...

 

And here's how the cover of Prog 1929 looks in your thrill merchant, so drokking cool!

 

 Son of a gun!

 

Huge thanks to Ryan for sending the images and write up, I'm a massive fan of his work, he's definitely one of the most exciting artists I've seen in a while. Here's to many, many more covers from this talented droid!