Stickleback: London's Burning 2nd Cover Step-by-Step

The 2nd cover for Stickleback: London's Burning (2000AD Prog 1676)

Stickleback © 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me

By popular request, here's a "clean" copy of the 2nd cover for Stickleback: London's Burning. Below is a step-by-step demo of the process used to make the cover. You can click on any of the images to see a much bigger version.

The cover was drawn directly into a computer using a Wacom Intuos 3 A5 graphics tablet, and three different applications; Adobe Illustrator for the initial drawing, Adobe Photoshop for the textures, and Corel Painter for the painted-looking finish.

1) In Adobe Illustrator 

1a) Roughs

The first step is to generate a rough drawing of the cover concept for approval by Tharg-in-Residence Matt Smith. The idea is to generate a drawing that's clear, but without putting in too much work, as it might well be rejected.

As per usual, I did some very rough doodles in my sketchbook, then drew the roughs on the computer using a Wacom tablet and Adobe Illustrator. 2000AD issue cover artists with a special template file that shows how much space to leave for the title block (though note a small blue semicircle where the drawing can overlap the titles). I've placed this PDF into an Illustrator template, so when I do the roughs I know I'm working to exactly the correct proportions.

Often, Matt Smith will supply the cover concept for 2000AD, but this time I was free to pick a scene from the final episode. I came up with two ideas - one a wounded Stickleback falling through the air with The Mistral exploding above him, the other a duel between Stickleback and Countess Bernoulli. Matt picked the duelling scene, so off we went. 

1b) Rough Pencils

This is exactly the same drawing as the previous one, just coloured light blue to act as rough pencils. The light blue dates from when I worked on paper, and would use a light blue pencil (which is not picked up by the reproduction process and so doesn't need to be erased) to rough out the drawing before pencilling with an ordinary graphite pencil. Nowadays, I do my drawing on different layers in Adobe Illustrator, so in fact any pale colour would do.

1c) Pencils

On a new layer, I do a more refined drawing in grey using the Pencil Tool set to stroke only, making sure that details are worked out and that proportions are correct. I don't bother with shading as that's established on the rough pencils.

1d) Blocking Out

The later stages of the process will take place in Photoshop and depend on working inside selections - masked-off areas of the drawing - so to make that easier I break the whole drawing down into chunks of colour while still working in Illustrator. It doesn't matter which colours I use as long as they separate adjoining or overlapping areas one from another. I make the pencils layer transparent (select all, opacity to Multiply) and then use it as a guide to make the blocks on several layers underneath, using the Pencil Tool set to fill only.

This is the blocked-out drawing with the pencils layer hidden. Once I've reached this stage I want to take the drawing out of Illustrator and into Photoshop, so I use File: Export and export as a 400dpi RGB Photoshop document with layers intact but WITHOUT Anti-Aliasing. I export the pencils and rough pencils layers as well as the colour blocks.

2) In Adobe Photoshop 

2a) Texturing

In this stage, I open the file in Adobe Photoshop and work on it using three main tools; the Lasso Tool (with Anti-Alias unchecked), the Magic Wand Tool and the Paint Bucket Tool. I use the Lasso and Magic Wand to select areas, then I apply textures using the Paint Bucket Tool, which is loaded with a set of my own home-made textures (culled from digital photographs of things like crumbly stone walls, concrete and tree bark). The texture layer is set to Multiply so that the whites are transparent.

I use the Rough Pencils layer as a guide to drawing shading; the textures go on their own layer. The quick way to do this is to trace the shadows with the Lasso Tool on the textures layer using the Rough Pencils as a guide, then hide the Rough Pencils layer and fill using the Paint Bucket Tool set to the required texture and with "All Layers" checked in the control bar - this means that both the selection (which is on the same layer as the fill) and the colour blocks (which are on an underlying layer) will constrain the Paint Bucket fill. What's the advantage? Well I could texture-fill all the pleats on the Countess's skirt in two goes, by first doing all the lighter blue pleats and then all the darker blue ones, without having to painstakingly trace around the edges of each pleat; the colour blocks handled that for me.

2b) Greys

Once I've got the textures done I make a layer between the texture and the colour blocks and fill it with white; then I make another couple of layers and fill certain parts of the background with grey, sometimes using the paint Bucket Tool, sometimes the Brush Tool with certain texture brushes of my own. I also use Select: Layer Transparency to make a selection that exactly matches the contents of the texture layer, then fill with a mid-grey on an underlying layer to beef up the textures a bit. I make a second fill on a layer above the textures and fill it with white, then set the layer to Multiply so the white becomes invisible. I name this layer "Blacks." 

3) In Corel Painter

I open the Photoshop file in Corel Painter. You can choose to convert to Painter's native RIFF format or not. Painter will work with both,  I usually convert because RIFFs save a lot faster, just remember you'll have to save a copy in TIFF or Photoshop format for Photoshop to open the file afterwards.

Remember that weird "Blacks" layer full of invisible white? I pick that layer, click "preserve transparency" on the Layers palette and paint into it in black using the Digital Watercolour Brushes. Because those invisible white pixels exactly match the shape and position of the textures in the layer below, and because "preserve transparency" only lets you paint where there are already pixels, I can shade over the textures very quickly, without ever having to worry about "coulouring outside the lines." This trick works with Photoshop too.

After that, I also do some painting with the same Digital Watercolour Brushes on a new layer to soften up the edges of shadows a bit and add a bit of modelling to the whites. On some pages I also add more texture with Chalk, Sponge and Spatter brushes, but here's that's not needed.

Then I save out in Photoshop format and finish off.

4) Tidying Up in Adobe Photoshop 

I open the file in Photoshop and do a quick check for overall tone and contrast (Photoshop has a better rendering engine than Painter so you can't really see how the page will print till you see it in Photoshop). I might add odd bits of shading or highlights to make sure the drawing is clear and you know what you're meant to be looking at - though here the drawing is simple enough that I don't need to do that.

The final step is to make two duplicates of the file (Image: Duplicate with "Duplicate Mereged Layers Only" checked to produce flattened files). I convert one to Greyscale (Image: Mode: Greyscale) and save it as a TIFF file. This copy is then put up on the 2000AD FTP server, where it will be used to print the cover. The second copy is reduced to 72dpi and saved as a JPEG for mailing to Tharg-in-residence Matt Smith for approval. 

Stickleback: London's Burning Parts 11 & 12 References

Stickleback Part Eleven

Original roughs for Part 11 Page 2 (left) with the finished article (right).

Note how the last three panels of the roughs give Black Bob his missing arm back.

Stickleback © 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD.

Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me.

It's funny what can slip past you when you're working full-tilt; Ian sent me the script for part Eleven which had gone through various drafts, been checked by Tharg-in-residence Matt Smith, and had got as far as my reading it twice, roughing it out in a sketchbook, repeating the exercise on computer, and starting the rough pencils before any of us noticed that the sequence where Black Bob kills Fiery Jack includes lines such as "Bob reaches out for Jack with both hands…" and "Bob tightly clamps his hands either side of Jack’s head." The problem being that we'd seen Bob lose an arm two episodes before. Still,  it all got sorted easily enough… and I can't exactly point the finger because last time it was me who forgot that a character has a severed arm.

Page Five: "Steely Punctuation"

Stickleback's lines come from Hamlet:

“Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet Princes.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Horatio, Act V Scene ii

Stickleback Part Twelve

Page Two: Lifeboat

Based loosely on the design of the old RNLI lifeboats.

Page Seven: Mister Estebez's Transformation

Mister Estebez final transformation is meant to reveal him as an agent of pan-dimensional nasties, just like the false Buffalo Bill in Stickleback: England's Glory. The goat-like facial transformation harks back to the character of Wilbur Whateley from H.P. Lovecraft's 1928 short story The Dunwich Horror.

Page Eight: The Mistral Explodes

Having grown up watching various Gerry Anderson televisions series, I'm a bit of a connoisseur of pyrotechnics, and I knew what I wanted for this shot. The obvious reference would have been the wreck of the Zeppelin Hindenburg in 1937, but that was really a sudden and all-consuming conflagration whereas I wanted an out-and-out violent explosion. My source of inspiration was the truly prodigious pyrotechnic and breakaway model work overseen by special effects director Shinji Higuchi for the 1999 film Gamera 3: Iris kakusei (Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris).

Page Eight: N. Penney, Waterman for Hire

A brief cameo for the crusty old river rat from our War of the Worlds sequel Scarlet Traces.

Page Nine: Stickleback's Harness

There's a hint that Stickleback's deformity is a prosthesis as far back as Stickleback: England's Glory Part Eleven.

Page Ten: The White Lotus Empress, her son, and Miss Scarlet

The White Lotus Empress (who is our female equivalent of Fu Manchu in the Stickleback universe and the only human being Stickleback seems to be afraid of) first appeared in Stickleback: England's Glory Part Twelve, when she came to the rescue with her giant dragon. Her son - the product of a union between herself and Stickleback - was mentioned briefly in the same episode.
The Empress and Miss Scarlet have some history, since Miss Scarlet was tasked with requesting The Empress's help in Part Six of the same story.

Stickleback: London's Burning Parts Eleven and Twelve References to be Delayed

Episode 11 contains such a dramatic twist, it was difficult to find a single panel that didn't contain a spoiler.

Stickleback © 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me.

Given the dramatic nature of events in parts eleven and twelve, I'll not be posting references for either episode until after both have been published, to avoid any possibility of spoilers.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Ten References

Page One: Sanderson's Department Store and The Burleigh Theatre

Both major landmarks of "Everytown," the fictional city seen bombed to ruins in an air raid in William Cameron Menzies' 1936 film Things To Come, which was based on H.G. Wells' 1933 novel The Shape Of Things To Come.

The air raid scene is compellingly realistic, which is all the more impressive because the first saturation bombing of civilians from the air did not occur until a year later in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, when the Basque town of Guernica was bombed by the German Luftwaffe and Italian Fascist Aviazione Legionaria on behalf of the forces of Generalísimo Francisco Franco .

Page One: "War Tubas"

These strange-looking devices (which can also be seen attached to the telescope on page one of this episode) are based on now-obsolete but nevertheless real devices called acoustic detectors, essentially giant ear trumpets which were designed to give advance warning of hostile aircraft in the years before radar was invented.

Page Three: Gatling Guns

Invented in 1861 by Dr. Richard J. Gatling, the Gatling Gun is probably the most famous precursor of the modern machine gun, and is instantly recognizable by its characteristic rotating cylindrical barrel.

The ones on the Mistral are very large scale, firing small-bore artillery shells instead of bullets.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Nine References

Page One : The Mistral's Engine Room

Inspired by childhood visits to the two-storey River Don Engine at Kelham Island Industrial Museum in my native Sheffield.

Page Two: Maintenance Robots

Hands up; we're riffing on the spider-style machines from Scarlet Traces with some of this stuff.

Page Three: Sic Transit Gloria Swanson

Ian's instructions regarding the Countess's body language in this sequence was "I see her as going a bit Gloria Swanson, all silent movie arm movements and the like!" It made sense to make her body language big and bold, in the style of the more expressive silent film actors, since her masked face couldn't show expression.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Eight References

Page Two: Breeches Buoy

Potts's emergency device is based on an old piece of marine rescue kit called a breeches buoy. The device was essentially a pair of trousers stitched into a lifesaver, with ropes running up to a pulley. It was used to extract personnel from ships wrecked near shore by allowing them to be hauled over the water using a line fired from a short-barrelled cannon called a Lyle Gun.

Page Three: The Mimsie Ascends

When I drew this I had in mind the magnificent night-time above-the-clouds scenes from Hiyao Myazaki's 1986 animated film Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (Laputa the Flying Island/Castle in the Clouds).

Page Four: Black Bob's Arms

I case you've forgotten, Black Bob's arms were both severed in combat with the false Buffalo Bill during the last episode of Stickleback: England's Glory, and we saw Miss Scarlet stitching them back on in the final page of that episode.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Seven References

Page One: Stickleback's London

This view is accurate in terms of the locations of landmarks and the positioning of the river bends in perspective; however, at the altitude necessary to take in this sweeping view, the individual landmarks would be vanishingly small, so I bumped their sizes up by a factor of five or so to make them visible.

As well as real landmarks such as Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgare Square, The Houses of Parliament, The Tower of London and Tower Bridge, we included the following planned or imaginary buildings:

1) The London Eye - a giant Victorian Ferris wheel, placed, like its 21st Century counterpart, opposite the palace of Westminster.

2) The Crystal Palace - here still occupying its original site in Hyde Park.

3) William Thomas's proposed giant pyramidal cemetery - designed to hold up to five million dead Londoners!

4) The proposed mausoleum for Sir Isaac Newton (the smaller pyramid with the sphere on top). We used this building as the new Greenwich Observatory (where Spry's office was located) in Scarlet Traces, but here it's been moved off Greenwich hill, to make way for:

5) John Flaxman's 200-foot-high statue of Britannia, proposed circa 1800 but never built.

Page One: The Mimsie

Though balloons using actual boats as gondolas is a common steampunk trope, the design of the Mimsie is meant to echo certain characteristics of that fine four-fendered friend, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, for reasons that will become apparent in the next item.

Personally, I couldn't help but think of Noah and Nelly.

Page Two: Potts

Inspired by the inventor hero of Ian Fleming's 1964 novel (and subsequently 1968 film) Chitty-chitty Bang-bang. Our Potts has been having a hard time of it, and is indebted to Stickleback to boot.