JUDGE DREDD VS. ALIENS BY FRAZER IRVING
| This was my fave of the lot. It had the idea of dredd reacting to
something off panel which I liked cos it actually justified having a
wraparound cover. Trick was to make sure there were at least SOME aliens on
the front, but that the hordes weren't seen till the back was opened. Pretty
loose sketch, like the others, drawn directly in photoshop. Luckily for me
Tharg liked this one too. |
| This was based on the page of henry's work which I was sent, and
matt's suggestion that we see dredd shootin stuff on the front and behind
him we see the aliens swarming in. I wasn't too sure about this cos I wanted
dredd facing the aliens but we had the problem that one of them would have
to have their back to us. Here we have a very rough scribble showing the
aliens on the reverse n dredd on d front. Not liked by me.
|
| This was my idea from the start. I had previously drawn a cover
for dark horse for a series I worked on called "Fort! Prophet of the
Unexplained" where the main character was seen shooting a swarm of
unidentified beasties lurching towards him. Not only did I like it as an
image, I thought it would be kinda cool (as Dark Horse were gonna publish
dredd-aliens too) to "homage" my own work. So here I replaced the Fort
figure with dredd, and on the back I showed the viewer what he was shootin'.
Didn't really work as a wraparound tho as the images were separate, and
tharg felt the drama of the first sketch kinda had more impact than this one
so it was dumped. Again, very rough scribbles in photoshop. |
| This was what I worked up after the idea was chosen. I drew on
real paper this time and worked up the figure of dredd a bit better, as well
as adding details to the aliens. I like this sketch as it has a lot of
energy and it's the first time I drew dredd without a round helmet that I
was pleased with. Note the writing on the art, telling me what to do with
the inking... |
| This is the inked version. I lightboxed the pencil art (as
always) and started working on Dredd first, aliens second. Having never
drawn aliens before I was kinda concerned to get the details right but after
I started the inks I kinda found my own voice with them and decided to go
with that. Some said their heads were too shiny, but I don't care. I like
em. Again, this version of dredd really pleased me. Finally. After 3
years... |
| The next stage was to paint in the colour. With this image I tried
the same method I did with the Cabbalistics cover a while back, where I
painted in the tones first as opposed to going straight to the final colour
choices. This helps because it defines all the lighting and texture without
confusing the issue with silly things like hue etc. here for some reason I
did dredd in red and the bad guys in grey.
|
| Next, thanks to the magic of photoshop, I overlayed the basic
colour areas on dredd and we start to see the whole thing happening. Still a
lot to do, but the method seems to work ok. |
| Here I experimented with some funky fx to create a decent gun shot
for dredd. Until now the whole middle area had been blank, suggesting a shot
rather than showing it, and I wanted something groovy for that. Some of this
came about by accident but as is often the case it was a happy accident and
I liked what had occurred. I applied a similar effect to the exploding alien
head. |
| Here, for your curiosity, is the almost finished colour work
minus the line art. Strange to see how some bits still look like the
original art ie dredd's face...
aside: for the past few months all the art I had done had been made on an
ibook with a tiny colour-crap screen. To do this cover though I bit the
bullet and got me a big phat G4 with a 21inch monitor. The difference in
speed and visibility made a huge difference, and I feel that this is very
important when doing pictures of the Galaxies Greatest Lawman... |
| This is the almost completed cover. This is what I showed to
tharg for approval. I'd completed the gun shot and tidied the colours and it
all seemed to be working aside from a few minor tweaks. Oddly the one
element which thought would come under fire was the circular gun flare, but
noone seemed to notice...so I kept it in there...:P |
| The final version can be seen opposite (assuming Wake has done his job
properly) and there u can see the additional tweaks to the background in
terms of a little extra texture, some minor colour variations and some
flares off the heads of the aliens. All in all an interesting cover (from my
perspective) and one that I felt happy with. |
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