Wraparound cover for 2000AD Prog 1811 - I had a real blast doing this
Lowlife Saudade copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD.
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint 

I've been getting a lot of positive feedback about the big wraparound cover for this week's Prog (1811). If you'd like to know a bit more, Pete Wells has kindly hosted a full step-by-step demo showing how the cover was done on his excellent 2000AD Covers Uncovered blog.

Lowlife: Saudade Cover at 2000AD Covers Uncovered

Cover for 2000AD Prog 1805
Lowlife Saudade copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD.
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint.

If you're into process-y, step-by-step demo-y goodness, there's more to be had at 2000AD Covers Uncovered, who have kindly agreed to host a detailed demo of the process behind the cover to last week's Prog - go get it!

And a big "get well soon" to Pete Wells at 2000AD Covers Uncovered, who's been suffering from the 'flu all this week.

Lowlife: Saudade Part One

Cover for 2000AD Prog 180. Click to embiggen.
A full step-by-step breakdown of the making of this cover is available on 2000AD Covers Uncovered
Lowlife copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD.
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint.

So, back in the saddle for another Lowlife!

(If anyone’s wondering what happened to the new Stickleback series I tweeted about a couple of weeks ago, have no fear, I’m working on it now; 2000AD often commissions material months in advance, so Lowlife:Saudade represents work I did between February and June this year).

One of the delights of working for a comic you read yourself as a child is that sometimes you get to draw stuff you remember fondly; thus I was happy to find myself working on a story set in the Dredd universe’s moon colony, Luna-1. Although I wasn’t a regular Squaxx until Prog 86 (when Starlord merged with 2000AD), I picked up the odd issue here and there (often on day trips) and there seems to have been a little cluster during Dredd’s tour of duty as Marshall of Luna-1 - the Face-Change Gang, the Lunar Olympics and The Oxygen Board, all stories drawn by Brian Bolland. (Quick digression - the first Judge Dredd story I ever drew, Master Moves, revisited several of the themes of the Lunar Olympics.)

One thing I wanted to do was really establish the cityscape of Lunar-1; previous renditions of the city tended to show the domes from the outside, but avoid any sense of enclosure once you were inside - not that I'm being sniffy about the efforts on my predecessors; the geometry of the inside of a dome is horribly tricky to plot by hand, and the only way I did it was by modelling the domes in a 3D program. Not only was that technology unavailable to Messrs. Bolland, McMahon and Gibson back in the 1970’s, but they only had about half as long as I do to draw a single episode. Nevertheless, there was a gap in the visual landscape of the Dredd universe that I felt could be usefully filled.

I built the domes in Carrara 3D* using transparent spheres embedded into squat, wide cylinders on an infinite plain; I added various small blocks around the edges of the cylinders to simulate smaller support structures. The shape was loosely inspired by the design on the moonbase in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’d made the domes themselves transparent by adding a glass shader to them, but I needed a bit of structure as well, to help me add details like support struts (I generally build as little as possible in 3D, preferring to add a checkerboard pattern to objects which allows me to accurately place hand-drawn details such as windows, struts and panels on the surfaces of complex objects.) To get transparent domes with a checkerboard pattern on them, I copied the domes, pasted the copies back in exactly the same positions (in 3D modelling, two objects can exist in the same space), replaced the glass shader on the copies with checkerboard, then reduced the opacity of the checked domes down to about 10% - giving the effect of a checked frosting on the “glass” dome (there’s probably a more sophisticated way of doing this by editing the shader directly, but I was in a hurry and this worked).

*I don’t especially recommend Carrara, it just happens to be the descendant of a 3D program I was given back in the late 90’s, and I’ve stuck with it out of familiarity and the fact that upgrades are cheap. If you’re starting from scratch, Google Sketchup is probably a better bet; the basic version is free, it’s easy to learn and ideal for the sort of simple modelling needed by comic artists.

Four stages of work on page three (click on image to embiggen)
Top left: imported 3D render. Top Right: perspective grids and rough pencils
Bottom Left: finished pencils. Bottom Right: inks over pencils and 3D render.

Once the models were built it was just a question of placing a camera inside one of the domes to give the effect of looking down from a tall building near the crown of the dome. I’d already drawn a rough of the page to help me work out what angle and field of view I wanted. Once I’d got the view right in Carrara I did a screen grab and imported it into Manga Studio; there I could use the 3-Point Perspective Ruler to build a perspective grid that mapped onto the perspective of the scene. With the grid in place, I could sketch in the bubbly organic Dredd-world towers by eye. Obligingly, the checker pattern I’d applied to the 3D shapes mapped onto the circular cross-section of the base cylinders as a sort of dart-board target pattern, so I had the rings of concentric roads inside the domes ready laid-out for me!

Brian Bolland's splash for Judge Dredd: The Oxygen Board, 2000AD Prog 57.
Judge Dredd copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD.
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

One last detail I made sure to add was the oxygen tankers docking with the crown of the domes - this comes from the Dredd story The Oxygen Board way back in Prog 57. I love finding these little connections back to the past history of the Dredd universe.

Lowlife: Saudade part one page three, with its eleven panel layout.
This is still only the same amount of work as six panels with two figures in each.
Lowlife Saudade copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD. 
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint. 

I’ve been a little surprised at how much attention page 2’s received due to its 11-panel layout. I guess I’m bucking the trend these days but I absolutely LOVE this dense style of storytelling - on the rare occasions I’ve written for myself, I tend to do very high panel counts, going up to 20 panels a page in the A4 pages of Timulo (Deadline magazine, 1989-90) and averaging 12-16 panels in the US-comic-sized Consequences (Autocratik Press, 1999, both stories now available in the collection Timularo from Lulu.com). It’s ironic, but dense pages always feel spacious to me, from the storytelling perspective; you can show the minutiae of action and reaction, take a character through a thought process; explore the environment that surrounds him. A lot of artists shy away from high panel counts because it looks like lots of work, but generally, because you can’t show as much per panel, you don’t end up doing that much extra drawing. Well, I don’t anyway.

 It’s a pity we don’t get to do more of this in 2000AD - unfortunately it’s a more contemplative style that’s probably at odds with 2000AD’s status as an adventure comic. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but a few years ago there was a 2000AD style guide that suggested no more than seven panels to the page maximum in order to keep the stories moving. But then again, Si Spurrier and I got away with a four-tier, eight-panel grid on The Vort.

Lowlife: Hostile Takeover Part One

Jon Davis-Hunt's trulys scrotnig* cover for 2000AD Prog 1700
© 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD 

2000AD Prog 1700 is upon us, and with it the first episode of Lowlife: Hostile Takeover. This one's a real roller coaster ride - there's gang war in the Lowlife as the Yakuza make a move on the Big Man, but can Dirty Frank stop them when he can’t even trust his own Wally Squad colleagues anymore? Part one finishes with a real bang and the story doesn't let up from there. I'm drawing episode nine of ten right now, and I can't wait to see how it ends.

Heavy Metal Kids from the Judge Dredd: Robot Wars storyline,  Progs 10-17
Art by Mike McMahon
© 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

For Lowlife: Creation, I had fun re-creating a classic Carlos Ezquerra H-Wagon. This time round, I delved a bit further back into Mega-City history for the design of Trev the Robot. Keen-eyed long-time Squaxx** may spot that Trev is a slightly-modified Heavy Metal Kid, the demolition robot that formed the backbone of Call-Me-Kenneth's army in the Judge Dredd: Robot Wars storyline (Progs 10-17). He was meant to be old, second-hand and tough enough to break into bank vaults, so the fit was perfect. 

Cross-Dressing Trev the robot, from Lowlife: Hostile Takeover part one.
© 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

*For non-2000AD readers: "scrotnig" is a compliment.

**For non-2000AD readers: "Squaxx" is not an insult.

OM NOM NOMINATION! 2000AD Covers Uncovered!

The cover to 2000AD Prog 1631, nominated for a 2010 Eagle Award
To see a step-by-step demo showing how this cover was made, click here.

Dirty Frank/Lowlife © 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint

Delighted beyond words to be nominated for a 2010 Eagle award for the cover to 2000AD Prog 1631 ("Stained Glass Frank"). Serious thanks to everyone who voted for the nomination. I'm really pleased by this because covers have always been a bit of a weak point with me - I'm much better at tying together lots of single images to make a comic than I am making one image that sums a whole story up (if you see what I mean).

Credit where credit's due; Tharg-in-Residence Matt Smith was the one who came up with the stained glass window concept, and of course, without Rob Williams' amazing character Dirty Frank there'd be no cover to start with. Simon Parr's excellent design work (for example integrating stained glass into the 2000AD logo) really added the finishing touch that helped make this one a winner. Plus, apologies to the unknown 14th-Century stained-glass artist whose composition I nicked for the window design ;-)

2000AD Covers Uncovered

While I'm at it, it's well past time that I bigged-up 2000AD Covers Uncovered, Pete Wells' amazing blog devoted to step-by-step demos by a whole passel of 2000AD creators showing their different working processes. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in the process of making artwork, a tribute to the time and effort put in by the creators of 2000AD, and a great resource for nicking ideas from.

Pete kindly did an extended  Easter Special on "Stained Glass Frank," check it out here.

Finally I'm waaayy behind on thanking the members of the 2000AD message board who voted "Stained Glass Frank" Cover of the Year 2009 on 2000AD Covers Uncovered's poll. I was ill around Christmas and missed Pete's original email notifying me of the result, and since then I've been scurrying to catch up on deadlines and D'Blog has ended up being rather neglected. And the dog ate my homework.

Lowlife: Creation Part One: Borrowed Plumage

Cover to 2000AD Prog by me.
Dirty Frank © 2009 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Dirty Frank created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint,
this version of the character based on designs by Simon Coleby.

The new 2000AD is out, featuring the first episode of Lowlife: Creation, by Rob Williams and myself, plus a cover by me (slightly to my surprise, as the "milky beard" thing happens in a later episode of the story). Much to my relief and delight, both cover and interior have printed exactly as I envisaged (note that "relief" comes before "delight" there; with two weeks' hard slog ahead of me to finish the last episode of Lowlife: Creation, finding that I'd messed up the repro on the seven previous episodes would have been a serious blow to morale).

I've talked before about how working in comics sometimes gives you a chance to play with favourite concepts and/or characters (or reasonable facsimiles thereof). Being an art droid for 2000AD means I'm sometimes let loose upon the stuff of my childhood dreams; Judge Dredd is the only character I've worked on that I also read regularly as a child.

Old Stoney Face can be a bit of a challenge, though; he's one of the few flagship licensed characters where you're positively encluraged to come up with your own version. Finding my feet with him has taken a while (and, ironically, since I felt I got a handle on the character, I've been so busy doing other stuff that I've only managed one Dredd story, and he wasn't in that one overmuch.) To date, I think that I've done better with Mega-City One than Dredd himself.

Pencils for Page 5 of Part 1 of Lowlife:Creation,
showing how my version of Dirty Frank is closely based on Simon Coleby's.
Lowlife © 2009 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint.

Lowlife has been a treat in that regard; I get to play around with the city without having to grapple with Dredd (and all issues of interpretation aside, not having to draw all those bloody eagles is nice;-). There's the question of Dirty Frank of course; in some ways he's a more complex character to interpret (he has more than one facial expression for a start), but after some playing around I decided to stick pretty closely to Simon Coleby's version. There were two good reasons for this; first, Simon's really made the character his own, and I wanted the readership to be drawn straight into Lowlife: Creation without spending the first couple of episodes adjusting to a new version of the character. Second, all my attempts to change the look of Frank ended up looking like degenerate versions of Ian Culbard.

Whenever I draw Mega-City One, thoughts of Carlos Ezquerra are never far behind. Carlos is of course the founding father of Mega-City One (more on this in a later post), and he was an major early influence on me. When I was eleven or so, I wanted to be Carlos Ezquerra in the way that other boys wanted to be rock stars or football players. Although I learned to counterfeit his rounded, organic style of design, it's so distinctive that I never felt able to pastiche it in my own projects, but working on Mega-City stories gives me the perfect excuse the borrow the Ezquerra "plumage" - so my Mega-City One always follows that tradition of bubbly shapes and gritty surfaces.

Carlos Ezquerra's classic stripey H-Wagons from mega-epic The Apocalypse War.
Judge Dredd © 2009 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

This time ~~I went one step further: inspired by Dave Taylor's recycling of the good old-fashioned stripey Ezquerra H-Wagons from The Apocalypse War for his Judge Anderson story Big Robots (Judge Dredd Megazine #257-261, 2007) I decided I'd also use them in the flashback sequence in the first episode of Lowlife: Creation.

My 3D model of the classic Carlos Ezquerra H-Wagon, made in Carrara 3D 6.
I faffed away ages building the rear booster, but in the final strip you don't even see the ship from behind.

Being me, I couldn't resist seeing if I could make a 3D model of the thing, even though it only appears in one panel. I was quite pleased with the result - by sheer fluke I got the little upward tilt of the nose section right on the first try; I'm sure I couldn't have done it deliberately. I've added a few tweaks to my version (external cannons, another eagle on the nose, and extra pods on the "wings"), but it's fundamentally Carlos' design.

The rendering of the 3D model (top) versus the finished art (bottom)

Since I needed reference for the H-Wagon, I ended up re-reading The Apocalypse War. It's a remarkable achievement - in 1982, after an absence of five years, Carlos Ezquerra returned to the character he'd created by drawing 25 episodes straight in real time (ie one per week; these days we art droids get at least a fortnight per episode). There's the odd dodgy bit here and there of course, but 25 episodes straight - I mean, I once drew four episodes of Dredd on fortnightly deadlines and I nearly died of it.

A flashback scene by Carlos Ezquerra from The Apocalypse War.
Judge Dredd © 2009 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

Anyway, re-reading The Apocalypse War, I was reminded of a neat technique Carlos used for flashback sequences. Where other artists tended to muck with panel borders to show flashbacks, Carlos "faded down" flashback panels by replacing black areas with chunks of mid-grey hatching. A useful effect, thunk I, and one well worth nicking for my own flashback sequence.

Left: the "blacks" are defined in mid grey.
Middle: less than a dozen strokes of my "Carlos hatching brush" generates all this hatching (the red outlines show the area that needs to be covered).
Right: the "blacks" are used to mask out the hatching.

I built an Illustrator brush that produces a cluster of short "Carlos hatching" lines, so I could lay down dense hatching really quickly. I then masked out these blocks of hatching to give hard-edged areas of shading, similar to the effect seen in The Apocalypse War. Since my flashback sequence takes place in a blizzard, I lined the shading up with the direction of the wind and blown snow to add dynamism. A modified version of the hatching brush let me quickly add myriad flecks of blown snow to the backgrounds.

The funny thing is, I've joked for years about drawing a strip that was just one man in a blizzard - as a relaxing antidote to all that detailed architectural stuff I usually do - but when I finally got the chance, I spent so long making 3D models and custom brushes that in the end the pages were no quicker or easier than usual.

Still, the getting there was fun.