Stickleback: Number of the Beast at 2000AD Covers Uncovered

2000AD Prog 1835, the cover for the final episode of Stickleback: Number of the Beast.
Stickleback copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD.
Stickleback Number of the Beast created by Ian Edginton and Me.

So, we come to the final curtain for this series of Stickleback - after such a long time away, I'm glad to see him back and set up for more adventures. Stickleback remains close to my heart - aside from the joy of working with me old mucker Ian Edginton, Stickleback is the first character I've helped create where we've got to go back and tell the continuing adventures. He represents a change of gear in my career.

To celebrate this landmark, I've got together with Pete Wells at 2000AD Covers Uncovered to put together a mammoth 3-part video post on the creation of this week's cover from first roughs to last TIFF file. It's packed with hints, tips and as much process porn as a body could want! Part one is up now!

Left: the original version of the cover with a white background.

Stickleback Number of the Beast: 2000AD Prog 1824 Cover

The new Stickleback steps out of his tank on the cover of 2000AD Prog 1824.
Stickleback Number of the Beast copyright Rebellion Developments Ltd/2000AD.
Stickleback created by Ian Edginton and Me

2000AD Prog 1824 see the start of our new Stickleback story, Number of the Beast, and sports a cover featuring the new Pope of Crime himself! Pete Wells at 2000AD Covers Uncovered has kindly hosted a step-by-step demo of the making of said cover, including a short video segment showing exactly how I produce  those texture effects. Check out the demo here. 

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: The Deal Part Three: After Hokusai

Cover to 2000AD Prog 1752, based on a print by Hokusai
© 2011 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Dirty Frank Created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint 

I didn't have that much so say about this week's episode of Lowlife: The Deal, but, luckily, Prog 1752 is the one that gets my Hokusai-derived Dirty Frank cover, which has been getting a lot of nice feedback, so I'll blat on about that instead.

Tharg-in-Residience Matt Smith sent me a very loose brief - a shot of Dirty Frank "done in a Japanese, Hokusai-style." Luckily, as a fan of the graphic works of Japanese print-master Katsushika Hokusai, I already had plenty of reference for his work to hand, so I set about searching for compositions with figures who were bowing, bending or otherwise inclining - ones that could easily be adapted to make a slump-postured Dirty Frank.

"Musahshi Goro Sadayo Dies in Battle at the Age of Fifteen" (right)
was the source for the figure of Dirty Frank.
From the Illustrated Book of Heroes of China and Japan in the Style of Katsushika.

To give you an idea of what I was looking for, here's the source material for the final cover, from the Illustrated Book of Heroes of China and Japan in the Style of Katsushika. I realized that the dying Samurai on the right-hand page could be easily turned into Dirty Frank striding along holding a staff.

I came up with three main possibilities, which I worked up as roughs on a 2000AD cover grid:

Three cover roughs - in the end, I only submitted the centre one.

The first is Dirty Frank and a stylized Aimee Nixon (the symbol of Frank's quest in Japan). The second is Frank on his travels, striding towards Hondo-Cit . The third is a Warrior Frank looking out over the city.

After thinking on it a while, I decided the second image was so much stronger than the others that I'd just submit that one, keeping the others in reserve. Luckily Tharg-in-Residence Matt Smith liked it, so away we went.

I wanted the backgrounds to have the correct flavour, so I borrowed the countryside portion of the background from this print, Aoigaoka Waterfall at Edo from A Tour of Japanese Waterfalls. I flipped the image left-for right to fit the composition, omitting the figures to focus attention on Dirty Frank.

There being no Hokusai prints of Hondo-Cit skyscrapers, I just made that bit up, using a sort of rough orthographic projection to match the not-quite-but-nearly perspective that Hokusai employed in his drawings.

A close-up of the lines in Dirty Frank's
coat, showing the lines created by
Manga Studio's brush tool.

The Samurai I was using for reference was wearing armour, and I wanted a "Hokusai-i-fied" version of Frank's normal outfit, so I copied the folds in the cloth from other Hokusai prints. I also noticed that Hokusai was using a brush for his cloth folds - the lines are more irregular that the ones on, say faces and hands, which I'm guessing are drawn with a bamboo pen - luckily I was drawing this in Manga Studio, a Japanese program which has analogues for the sort of Sumi-E brushes you'd need to get this effect. I can't say I controlled the lines all that well (see left), but it helped to give verisimilitude* to the drawing.
*I've always wanted to say that, "give verisimilitude."

The final stage was to export the drawing to Photoshop for colouring. Since I was imitating the effect of woodblock printing, I used flat colour with no modelling or shading, just a couple of gradients (an effect Hokusai produced by mixing inks on the printing blocks). I opened the file in Corel Painter and "mussed up" the gradients a little using a blender brush to stop them looking too mechanical.

Hokusai printed his work in lovely bright colours, which have subtly faded over time. To get the character of the colouring right, I sampled most of the key colours from scans of Hokusai's prints, filling in with a few colours of my own as needed. The final stage was to add a subtle texture over the whole image - appropriately enough, one I made myself from a photo of the weathered paint on the back door of our local Chinese grocers. This gave the impression of paper texture and helped to break up the too-perfect flat Photoshop colouring a little.

So, after all that effort, do you have anything more than a big cold swipe? Well, I made sure to sign the cover "After Hokusai," the standard artist's way of crediting the person who's work is being quoted (thanks to the guys at 2000AD for including this in the cover credit). For those who already know Hokusai's work, it'll hopefully be an amusing pastiche, a fun way of summing up the themes of this series of Lowlife. For those who haven't heard of Hokusai before, hopefully it'll be a way of spreading the word; and if you'd like to know more, his Wikipedia page and this Google search aren't a bad place to start.

Cover to 2000AD  Prog 1713 - for a Dredd story written by Brendan McCarthy
Judge Dredd © 2010 Rebellion Development/2000AD
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra
Colour scheme for this image based on one devised by Brendan McCarthy

There'll be some scarred retinas amongst the Squaxx this week - this is my cover for Prog 1713, based on Brendan McCarthy's amazing psychedelic Dredd story that's running at the moment. Brendan's a bit of a hero of mine, so doing something that would live up to his work was a real challenge. Matching his positively electric colour palette took quite a bit of time and thought. I haven't seen the finished article in print yet, and I'm still a bit nervous about whether it'll turn out alright.

If you're interested in seeing how this cover was put together, there's a full step-by-step demo on Pete Wells' excellent 2000AD Covers Uncovered.

Lowlife: Creation Part Eight Cover: It's The Little Things That Count

Cover for 2000AD Prog 1631 by me, with design work by Simon Parr
Lowlife characters and 2000AD logo © 2009 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint

I'm running late anyway, but I want to wait a bit before writing about the last episode of Lowlife: Creation to avoid spoilers; besides, I have something else I want to talk about this time.

I'd like to pay tribute to designer Simon Parr, whose work (credited to editorial droid "Pye-01") has been gracing 2000AD for some years now. For an artist, 2000AD is a bit of a dream job as far as covers go anyway - they have a policy of fitting cover text to the drawing, meaning that they'll leave out text if the cover design fills the space (so you're not having to leave blocks of random space in the drawing for cover text), and the logo's quite small and neatly tucked away, too - but a good designer still makes all the difference to the finished product.

Take the above cover - a stained-glass window motif suggested by Tharg-in-residence matt Smith. Simon requested a sample of the stained-glass background pattern I'd used in the illustration, applying it not only to the main 2000AD logo, but also dropping it into the red areas of the small 2000AD badge (top left) and behind the text on the issue number box (top right). Neat little touches like that really help to pull the design together; the smart use of the stained glass texture helps the whole cover to feel like a stained glass window without affecting the legibility of the small text.

So next time you look at any comic cover, take a moment to appreciate the effort that's gone into it, not only by the artist but also editor and the designer. The editor usually supplies the basic cover idea, and the designer's job includes choice of fonts, positioning of text, colour schemes that match or contrast with the illustration, and careful use of masking (effectively "cutting out" bits of text or logo so that parts of the illustration seem to fall in front of them). All these things take time and thought, and can have a big effect on the impact of the finished product.

Myself, I never find cover designs easy, so I find it incredibly helpful to have positive guidance from my editor and the support of a good designer. I've been very lucky to find that at several times in my career (I've previously thanked editor Dave Land and designer Amy Arendts for their sterling work on the graphic novels Ian Edginton and I produce for Dark Horse), and I'm glad to have it at 2000AD. Thanks for making me look good, guys.

Back To Life

Cover for 2000AD Prog 1575; thanks to design droids PYE-01 and/or R1F4 for all the careful cutting-out of tentacles to overlap the banner on the finished product.
Stickleback © 2008 Rebellion AS/2000AD.
Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me.

Recent sad events have rather got in the way of both blogging and working the past couple of weeks; however, it's time to start moving forward. At the moment I'm running a few days late on my new post-Stickleback project (of which more anon). This will hold up the bloggery-pokery a little, but I'm still going to post the relatively small number of references for the remaining episodes of Stickleback: England's Glory.

Meanwhile, I'd like to celebrate, belatedly, my fourth cover for 2000AD (above). This will be available for sale as an artwork print at Bristol.

Left: Sketchbook rough for the cover
Right: Rough pencils for the same.

Stickleback © 2008 Rebellion AS/2000AD.
Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me.

CCG Annual Cover

Cover design for the Comics Creator's Guild Annual
© 2007 Me.

Back when it was still the SSI*, the Comics Creator's Guild was instrumental in helping me start my career in the comics industry. I rejoined them at CAPTION this year, and was delighted to be asked to contribute the cover to this year's annual.

*The Society For Strip Illustration

Stickleback Cover

Back from my travels to be greeted by 2000AD Prog 1525, bearing my Stickleback cover and the last part of Mother London. Despite a few minor surprises at the interior repro, I'm relieved at how well it's turned out; aside from the fact that it must be a bugger to print, that last episode was done in such a rush that I've no idea what the heck I was drawing towards the end.

They've put a nice, subtle cyanotype-type tint on the cover image (which was done black & white like the interiors). At some point, I'll have to have a go at translating this technique into colour...

I'll sort out references for the last episode in the next day or so.

Stickleback Cover

No Prog number yet I'm afraid (I usually find out when the thing hits the news stands), but I've been commissioned to do a Stickleback cover for 2000AD. Thought you might like to see pencils (left).

Part eight's in progress and has some corking moments - including yet another little cross-over within the "Edginton-verse" (of which more closer to the time).

Stickleback © 2007 Rebellion/2000AD.
Created by Ian Edginton & Me.