It’s thirty years, give or take a month or two, since I drew my first episode of Sláine.
Here’s a couple of panels from my contribution to the Sláine anniversary issues of 2000AD. More later!
Sláine Book of Scars
16 June 2013Down to Earth with a Bump
14 June 2013August 1980, in Forbidden Planet in Denmark Street, sitting at a table with John Wagner etc. signing copies of the 1981 Judge Dredd Annual.
Mother to son: ‘And would you like this gentleman to sign your comics?’
Son to mother: ‘No, not him, he’s rubbish!’
Mother to crestfallen me: ‘Er, terribly sorry.’
Nothing to do with the above, here are a couple more concept pics from my last flirtation with the video games industry. Can’t imagine why I haven’t posted them before, I’m very fond of them!
Rogue Staples
8 June 2013There’s a possibility that I’ll be working with Greg Staples, noted painter and screen actor, later this year.
Using this old Rogue Trooper commission of mine as a test, Greg’s done a quick digital colour sketch to see how it might work. Looks good to me!
Last American from the 1987 UK Comic Art Convention Booklet
4 June 2013More thieving, this time from the Storm Comics Blog.
I don’t have a copy of the booklet, and never did have, so mortified was I by this drawing, my first published work after I had been ill for a couple of years. Looking at it now I can see that, while not really anything to write home about, it’s nowhere near as bad as I thought.
It is a peculiar experience to start drawing again after a long break, my hand was completely out of sync with what was in my head, very frustrating. Still not sure if it’s back to how it was.
Enter the Fink
9 April 2013Just nicked this from Drokk and Stomm.
I have no memory of drawing this at all, which is all the more annoying because I like it a lot, especially Ratty’s tail.
I’m assuming the background was originally white, which I’m sure wouldn’t work half as well as that creamy weathered look.
Kestrels Inks
7 April 2013I finally got going on mine and Ben Dickson’s Kestrels book but I had to stop due to getting a job with a deadline.
But at least I finally have an idea what it might look like. Early days but still confident.
Glory in Death Cutscenes
5 April 2013Like a lot other people who play video games, the thing I like best about cutscenes is when you find the right control to turn the bloody things off. Unless, of course, you’re getting paid to work on them, in which case it is a completely different kettle of fish (for a couple of months, anyway).
So here’s a bunch of sketches and finished drawings that went into the making of several sequences for the Glory in Death Warhammer 40k N-Gage phone game.
I’d love to be able to post the videos but, as with so much of my old work, I (accidentally) binned them.
Glory in Death Talking Heads
2 April 2013Courtesy of my chum Adam Board, I’ve just taken delivery of a shed load of pencil sketches and drawings from my time working at Razorback developments.
Here’s a selection from the work that went into producing the Space Marines talking heads for the Glory in Death game.
The final in-game images would be 96 x 96 pixels, so it took me a while to get the hang of what sort of detail would or wouldn’t work at such a small size. Great fun!
Pencil Dredd
13 March 2013This was a commission based on the last panel of the Cursed Earth story, as Dredd prepares to board a flight from Mega-City Two back to Mega-City One.
I’ve spent years wondering about this, because I thought that such a flight was impossible due to the flying rocks that fill the skies over the wastelands between the two cities, and were the reason for Dredd’s overland trek in the first place, but I’ve just looked it up and it seems to have hinged on the airports at Mega-City two being overrun with mutants (or something).
Just as well, as I’d forgotten all about drawing the rocks into the background pretty early on in the piece anyway, doubtless out of guilt at the cack-handed way I’d drawn the episodes where the rocks are infested with mutant rats. Fur!
