BARNEY

NECRONAUTS 

BY FRAZER IRVING

This was based on an idea suggested by Tharg, ie take a panel from the strip and make it the cover along with a hook line such as "eat lead" which I didn't like but I drew the sketch anyway.
This was my fave idea at the time, being a take on the first page of that episode. I liked the drama it had but tharg pointed out it left a big hole in the middle of the page so we decided not to pursue it.
This was the one that made it, the dynamic duo cover. I wanted to make the cover a "two against the forces of evil" type image, and luckily this one fitted the bill for tharg so I went ahead and made a proper pic of it.
This was my Frazetta cover, where I imagined Fort all alone against an army of Tcho Tcho's, very much like half a dozen classic Frazetta paintings. Tharg didn't dig it tho, as it focussed on Fort and the dynamic duo cover had greater appeal. Note the blue bits on these sketches: these are the places where I suggested cover lines to go. That particular cover design I felt was a bit restricting, as it took away much of the image and we also had cover lines to add on. The new cover design is SO much better.
This is the b/w art that was finally sent to Chris Blythe to colour. Here it is seen with lots of bleed as tharg likes, and in my opinion it has the most imapct here. I would have liked to have gone with a b/w cover (it's been done before) because this was the first major b/w strip 2000ad had run since like AGES ago. But hey, I am but a humble droid....
This was tricky as my fave sketches had been rejected and the ideas put to me by Tharg were kinda off the track that I wanted to follow. But fortune smiled and my final sketch matched up with Tharg's ideas and I happily drew it up. I wanted to do the colour as well but new droids don't get to do such fancy things so early on and so my version stayed unpublished until it was put up here. The idea for the colour was to mimic/emulate the garish as jaundiced colours on the covers of old Pulp paperbacks. Hence the yellow and blue. Yellow and blue are a recurring colour scheme in my covers...
My first cover mock up. Here I went for a simple blue and yellow scheme to see how it worked with the cover design.
Here I toyed with making the tcho tcho's red, in an effort to give the cover more contrast. I didn't like it.
Here I went even further and did more disgusting things, such as red background and dark tcho tcho's. What was I on?
At this point I think I can see why tharg was reluctant to allow me to colour my own work:) this is just silly, but thanks to the glory that is photoshop I can be experimental about colour and not fret about ruining the image. If it doesn't work, I just change it back.