"WHAT IF I'M A LITTLE LATE...?"

"S.D. Plissken. American, Lieutenant - Special Forces Unit 'Black Light'. Two Purple Hearts - Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to be decorated by the President. Then you robbed the Federal Reserve Depository. Life sentence, New York maximum security penitentiary. I'm about to kick your ass out of the world, war hero." 

For "All Outta Bubblegum", a John Carpenter tribute show at Hyaena Gallery. Opening Sat April 12th.

Rumor has it there'll be some very special guests...

COMMISSIONS, COMMISSIONS, COMMISSIONS...

Been pretty busy with work stuff so been away from the personal work for a while. Luckily for me (and for you!), there's these to tide me over. Two wonderful pieces of art from two trailblazing and highly influential artists, humbly requested by myself and pretty much encompassing everything cool.

First, there's Mick McMahon revisiting an iconic 2000AD cover of old. Look at this thing. No ambiguity in the shading or execution. It's bold and vibrant and thrilling. Loved it so much I asked Mick if he'd ink the piece separately so I could keep the pencils, which are just as fucking beautiful.

And then there's this: 2000AD and Mad Max 2 pretty much melted my head when I first experienced them. There are people who think shit like The Godfather and Citizen Kane are the greatest movies ever made. Here's $10. Go buy a clue. It's not even a debate. MM2 fucking rules. The end.

Then Brendan McCarthy spews this puppy out into the world, just for me. Brendan McCarthy - he of Dredd, Rogan Gosh, Spider-Man: Fever, Zaucer Of Zilk and currently warping my mind with The Deleted in Dark Horse Presents - but by a wonderful coincidence ALSO the co-writer and designer of the upcoming NEW Mad Max movie. Come on, what the fuck else was I going to ask him to draw...? Badass. All it needs is Lemmy and we'll be laughing...

Lookit those mutiemen behind Dredd. Awesome. So happy. If I ever have 200 million dollars burning a hole in my pocket, this is what it'll be getting spent on...

ZARJAZ #20 COVER

Was asked at the last minute if I could provide a cover to the almighty ZARJAZ. Was more than happy to jump in. Kano and BAD Company are WAY too much fun to draw. It's the free gigs that end up being the most rewarding. There's a moral here somewhere. As usual, click the link to enlarge the image.

ZARJAZ traditionally uses wraparound covers so it's tricky coming up with a composition that works. You want something eye-catching for the front cover but don't want to waste the back cover so I took as much imagery from the story inside and made a retelling of it. Dave Johnson's covers for 100 Bullets were great inspiration.

First, some sketches. I knew I wanted Kano's monocle to be the centerpiece so I riffed off that idea...

 ...until I settled on something that might work.

 

Thought I'd try something different with the color instead of the usual flat rendering. Wanted to make it look a little more painterly and rough within the inked lines.

 

ZARJAZ #20 is for sale - both digitally and on good old-fashioned paper and ink - HERE and for the ridiculously low price of 3 English pounds.

CHROMATIC DEATH / MORAL CRUSADE

 If there's one big regret I have, it's that I've never kept artwork from when I was younger. Had tons of stuff and I clearly remember a day when I took it all, crumpled it all into a giant heap and shoved it into a bin. To this day, I'll never know why I did that. I'd give anything to see it all again. (Not like it would have been any good, but just to touch that era of my life again...)

In any case, gives me a warm thrill to find this stuff online. I hope the boys don't mind me posting it up here. I went to school with the almighty Mano, who became a bass player with a band called Chromatic Death...

 

...and Mano asked if I'd help out with some art for flyers. Man, I loved doing this. Still remember drawing it up. Images aren't very good quality but you get the jist. Anyway, Chromatic Death eventually renamed themselves Moral Crusade due to another band using the name. Weirdly enough, one of my good friends here in Los Angeles was in the other Chromatic Death!

 

Ahhh. So much fun. I didn't do the flyers below, they just cut my bit in where appropriate. I bet Billy Brennan's Barndance didn't know what fucking hit it that night...

What got even more exciting was when Moral Crusade decided to record an album and myself and the insanely talented Paul Kelly did it for them. I designed it, Paul painted it up...

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Something in the works. Lot of fun. Hopefully there'll be more to show in the future...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Not exactly my finest hour but hey, that's how long it took!!!! Ba-dum-tssssh! Slaine and Ukko yukking it up for the 2000AD forum's Advent calendar. Merry Christmas everybody!

UPDATE: Then like an idiot, I decided I would redo the entire thing. And not just that, but I would redo it in McMahon's style. Yeah, here's my progress after two days. I rarely give up on something, especially this far along, but the Cintiq was NOT happy with the constant back and forth. For the good of my loyal tool and my sanity, I decided to stop here.

For what it's worth - I now understand why McMahon changed his style.

KEVIN O'NEILL NEMESIS COMMISSION

Now this is something to behold, if I do say so myself. Hanging proudly over my desk right as I type, this piece is something of a grail to me. I picked up my first issue of 2000AD in 1981 and sandwiched between the spectacular work of Carlos Ezquerra and Brian Bolland lay Nemesis the Warlock, as written by Pat Mills and illustrated by the almighty Kev O'Neill. To say my ten-year old world was upended would be something of an understatement.

O'Neill's artwork is difficult to properly describe to those unfamiliar with him. Of all the artists to grace the pages of 2000AD over the years, his is surely the most original and inventive. There's really nobody to compare him to. He's a true visionary. His sense of design is startling and there's a wealth of creativity and energy spewing from his art that can be overwhelming to the layman. It's too easy to look at it and label it surreal. 'Surreal' suggests that nothing makes any sense - that it's just random subconscious imagery mashed together, but the world O'Neill creates here (and later on in the likes of Metalzoic, Marshal Law and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) isn't randomly designed. Everything slots together here. It's just so completely alien to anything else you've ever seen before. It's no surprise he became the first comic artist to have his work banned by the American comics code as being unsuitable for younger readers.

I have spoken to Kevin O'Neill twice. Once on the phone courtesy of a friend managing a comic store in Dublin who wouldn't tell me who was on the other end. Naturally, I made a complete tit of myself. Completely starstruck. Tripped over my own words and died of embarrassment afterwards until years later when I met him here in Los Angeles for a LOEG signing. He remembered the phone call and I managed to say how much his work meant to me without sounding like a complete and utter fuckstick. Man's a total gent.

In between those two encounters, an old girlfriend secretly commissioned this from the grand master. I'll never know how much it cost her to get this drawn up and I've never seen another commission by O'Neill since, certainly nothing with this kind of attention or detail, so in the unlikely event she reads this, I hope she knows I know how lucky I am to have it. And that every other girlfriend has looked at it since and thought "how the fuck am I going to beat that?"

MANTISMAN

...or something. Took a while to get him. He may still change before he's committed to the final page.

BADASS EYEBROWS

Was looking a lot at Bill Pope for reference. Naturally, it ends up looking nothing like him. The eyebrows were a happy accident.

KLEGG SCRAMBLE

Some concept sketches. Klegg's fun to draw even if he's undergone a little reinvention here.

"THIS THE PLACE, BOSS?"

Getting there, piece by piece. Still pretty rough but good bones to build on. Still having fun. Ask me again in a month with a deadline looming.

HUNGER GAMES

Or certainly the version I'd like to watch...! Faux-2000AD cover for the forum monthly competition. Theme this month is spin-offs - taking a minor character and giving them their own series. Not much minor about Golgotha, I s'pose, but first thing that came to mind was "Hunger Games" as a logline. Probably got a bit carried away but the man himself, Brian Bolland, is a guest judge this month so didn't want to just half-arse it.

MICK McMAHON PENCILS

Putting my piece of shit below to shame - here's the almighty McMahon's pencils for a bunch of commissions (which means mine is on the way, I hope!). Very rare to see the pencils up close before they're inked but look at how delicately these are put together. Breathtaking, really. Can't stop looking at them.

As always, click on the images to enlarge them or even better, just go to Mick's website HERE to see more of them.

Dredd and a half...

...Mean Machine...

...The Last American...

...and "You're next, Punk!" Awesome.

BIG BOOTS

Yes, Dredd again. Sue me.

MORE THUMBNAILS

Slowly working through it. Seven pages in all. Think I've about three of them very loosely tied down. Once I have them all laid out, I'll go back and change them, I'm sure. Push the angles and compositions a bit. Make sure it's not too same-y.

They're never exactly written in stone though. Here's a thumbnail from The Hills of Hellfire, My Love in ZARJAZ #16...

Never miss an opportunity to procrastinate, stress yourself into oblivion because there's a deadline looming and chop and change right down to the wire, that's what I always say. The panel in the bottom right corner in the thumbnail eventually became the first panel of the next page. Here's the finished page (minus lettering, obviously)...

Click to enlarge, as always.

The battle continues.

FAMILY FREELANCE GUY

Yes, I know. More Family Guy stuff. Posted this because I like how it turned out for some Australian press and I like to update this place at least once a week.

I get asked to do quite a bit of extra stuff by FOX and while some of it can be by-the-numbers these ones were fun to do. Unfortunately, doing this kind of thing eats up spare time so personal projects get pushed back quite a bit. Boy's gotta eat. And I can never say no.

LET THE MADNESS BEGIN...

Starting up thumbnails/sketches for another contribution to 2000AD lovefest ZARJAZ. Just handling the art this time. Working from a great little script by the impressively named Santiago Mayaud-Maisonneuve.

This is my favorite part of the process, hands down. All the fun of figuring out the storytelling, compositions, angles and designs before I have to sit down and ruin all my good work by actually drawing them.

"HOW THE F^*K ARE WE GONNA STOP THIS GUY?"

You can't. Best movie of 2012. 'Nuff said.

BITS AND BOBS...

They've nothing to do with one another. Does what it says on the tin. 

Stewie as a Terminator for my good pal Jeff Rebner...

...and a gunship from the strip I contributed to Zarjaz #16.

I find designing vehicles pretty arduous but so rewarding when (if!) it all comes together. This one's a mash of everything from a Russian MIL-24 helicopter, a wasp and an Eagle from Space: 1999.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

As there's countless other, and far worse, ways I could have made the news, I'm sure my family will settle for this. All over the English press today. Only finished it Wednesday night!

1. I could draw the Queen, Charles and Camilla all day long. They have fascinating faces. So many possibilities.

2. Since I colored Ezquerra's Strontium Dog commission below I've discovered I'm very good at coloring refreshing looking beer. Making me thirsty.

EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE

Sketched this out yesterday. It's pretty slight but there were three things I wanted to achieve - 

I've been poring over EDUARDO RISSO's beautiful artwork lately. I'm fascinated by artists who aren't afraid of using huge areas of black and Risso is a master. I can never figure out how he manages to keep a pose so clear by using silhouette or shadow but he never fails to amaze me. There's never any confusion or lack of clarity so I figured I'd do something simple and see if I could I sell it in the same way.

Risso says "what?" one more time...

100 Bullets

He's also an extremely graphic artist. Hard shapes. There's not a lot of rendering or cross-hatching. Mostly just clean lines, broken up with clever use of black and white. (100 Bullets is just fantastic. You should go hunt down the trades and read them all right now.)

The second thing I was toying with was using photo reference for the pose. I found myself frustrated by my inability to beat the drawing into where I wanted it to go. Couldn't figure out the poses and eventually scoured the web for something I could refer to. And here's the thing - I felt like I was cheating. I can be too much of a purist when it comes to this stuff, I guess, and with myself too. There's a streak of pride that says I should be able to draw this stuff from my head and if I need help, that's a cheat.

But I like how the drawing turned out. It's not like I just traced a photograph. It's been altered and repositioned and reinterpreted and y'know, if I wanted to draw a 1973 Dodge Charger it's not like I'm going to pull that out of my head, now is it? When I worked in feature animation, all we did was use live-action reference for human movement and posing.

Then by some weird coincidence, I saw THIS ARTICLE this morning about using photo reference and now all's well with my world again. Need to give myself a break sometimes...

The thing is, now I'm asking myself why I haven't been doing this before...? Feel quite inspired now to try new things.

The third point was this sketch was initially supposed to be Fiona Apple but it's a little too generic looking to be her. Next time maybe. Needs some quirky.

READINGS FROM THE DEVIATUS

For 2000AD's monthly art competition from a little while back. Won me a wee prize too.

It was about halfway through this piece I hit upon the idea of trying to stylize it a bit more than usual and make it look almost celtic, without it being too ornate. Simplifying it down to simple graphic shapes. I always spend so much time building and covering stuff up. Fun to just keep clean, clear lines. I love the green Terminator. Metal codpiece hot pants.

CELLAR OF DREDD

There are Dredd fans and then there's John Burdis. If he's not busy dispensing judgement in his garb of office at every convention he can reach, he's busy gathering every single piece of Dredd/2000AD memorabilia and storing it in his basement. What, you think I'm joking?

Here. See for yourself.

Better than collecting dead hookers, I always say. John's a lovely chap and can, coincidentally, kill you with his thumbs so you should probably go check out his collection. It'll take you days to go through all this stuff...

SOMETIMES YOU GET THE BEAR...

It's hard to remember there once was a time we still worked with paper and pencils on Family Guy. Whole thing went digital a few years ago. The variety of work hasn't changed though. One day you're designing giant homicidal Transformers constructed out of dudes in wheelchairs...

...the next you're sketching slutty strippers. There's worse ways to make a living.

(Family Guy is the property of FOX, obviously. Just throwing that out there.)

BORN TO RAISE HELL

One of the LEMMY doc's directors asked if I'd throw this together for Lemmy as a present. Only too happy to oblige and drop it off in person to the man himself at his roost in the Rainbow Bar and Grill. Had a natter over a pint of Guinness and we both enthusiastically agreed that the weather back home is shite. A total gent and warrior.

His health's been in the news a bit this year but can't imagine it'll be too long before he's out crushing skulls with Motörhead again.

Educate yourselves. This is what a real rock'n'roll legend looks like:

"THEN IN THE NAME OF TAU, WHO PLAYS THE PANDEMONIUM?"

"NEMESIS!"

I love this piece. I'll even tell you why: the whole thing's a happy accident. I hadn't intended to have it so painterly looking but sometimes you just mess around with a bunch of different brushes in Photoshop with a nice sharp-edged eraser to do damage control and you move outside of your own style. I'm always frustrated by my own limitations, my own approach and methods. I assume it's like that with a lot of artists so it's very exciting (to me, anyway) to create a piece of artwork that takes a life of its own while you're working on it.

McMAHON HELLBOY...

Absolutely fantastic. Can't wait for this now. Two-parter due in December.

ANIMATED JUDGE DREDD PROJECT

So yes, it's true. It's in the works. It's going to take some time. It's ground to a bit of a halt with everyone's day jobs getting in the way but we'll be back at it as soon as we can and knocking this back into shape. What can I say without getting myself into trouble with my partners-in-crime...?

It's probably only going to be five minutes long or so. We have the blessing of Dredd's owners although that comes with a major caveat - no funding, no Kickstarter, etc. It has to be purely not-for-profit so really any budget we have is made up of people's goodwill and enthusiasm for the character. 

It's classic-era Dredd. Probably pre-Apocalypse War. We're sticking very close to the comics. There's no radical reinvention of the concept here although as every other attempt to bring Dredd's world to life has involved some reworking, this might be the closest incarnation to the strip in style and tone so I'm going to say that's pretty radical in itself.

It's too early to start showing off everything we have so far but we've let this one out of the bag to give some idea of the style.

So anyway - for those of you who don't know, animation is a painfully slow, meticulous process. (Especially if you want it done right.) It takes a long time to get from point A to point B and don't mistake any long silences as anything other than we're toiling away on this thing behind the scenes.

Preliminary character designs are being wrapped up. I'm very proud of what's been produced so far.

I finally have the answer to a question I've often been asked (and often wondered myself!): WHY HASN'T ANYONE TRIED THIS BEFORE?

It's a disappointingly simple answer, folks: Dredd is SHIT hard to draw right. He really is. Despite being drawn and reinterpreted by dozens of different artists over almost 40 years, it's still really easy to get him wrong. One element out of place and it's all pear-shaped. Don't even get me started on the helmet. (I had a particularly humbling and galling moment at San Diego Comic-Con watching 2000AD artist extraordinaire Henry Flint fart out a wondrous sketch of Dredd for me in sixty seconds while I tried to forget it took me almost two weeks of murderous wailing and gnashing of teeth to get the same design right.)

Dredd's costume is detailed and ornate and completely impractical and trying to figure out what/how/why to simplify so that somebody can animate it, draw it over and over and over again from various angles is hard work. But it's all worked out. We have a Dredd we're happy with along with plenty of other assorted oiks, muckers and denizens of Mega City One.

What else? The mighty Rich McAuliffe has written us up a fantastic script. We don't have a lot of time to tell a huge tale but the script he wrote perfectly captures the tone of John Wagner and one of those one-off six pager lumps of awesomeness.

The inimitable Flint Lockjaw has been a trooper having drawn, voiced and edited together a rough animatic from the script so we can see how it all fits together and we can tweak/edit ideas. This is a painfully familiar process in animation but for us, it's even more crucial. Just like the cast and crew of the mind-blowing JUDGE MINTY film, we have no budget to work from. We need to be sure our planning's as tight and lean as it can be so there's no waste of anyone's time or talent.

So there you have it. Train's still rolling. Dredd's in VERY good hands right now. We'll keep you posted.

Updates and progress can be followed HERE at the film's website.