MAKING OF A DRUNKEN DRUID GETTING SURPRISED BY A REPTILIAN ANGEL THINGY!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS GUYS!

Y'know, nothing says "Christmas" more than a scene featuring a 17th century drunken druid guy, getting surprised by a scary ass reptilian Seraph angel in a dark corridor. And by a STARTLING coincidence I happen to have one here!!!

So here's the making of one of my favourite pages from Book Four of 2000AD's "Defoe: A Murder of Angels", from script to final printed page.

Script by Pat Mills...

My original design for the Seraph Angel...
Rough layout...
Loose pencils...
Finished inks...
Final printed page with lettering by Elle De Ville...
Right, bugger off now and have a fantastic Christmas!!!

(And don't forget to leave out some mince pies for the reptilian angel thingy when he climbs down your chimney...)

L

JUDGE DEATH COMMISSION!!!

Hey guys, Just a quick one here. I don't usually have much time to take on private commission work, but a couple of weeks ago, Pete Wells of the wonderful site 2000AD COVERS UNCOVERED caught me at a good time. Asking for an image of the classic Dredd villian, Judge Death, he basically gave me free reign....
Here's the very loose rough I got to him for approval...

...with the pencils shortly after. Sorry about the quality--I had to take a photo, as in a very short space of time I have found myself without a working A3 scanner, laptop AND iMac (piece of crap! Should've stuck to bloody pcs...)

Hope you like it, and please check out Pete's 2000AD COVERS UNCOVERED, which shows every new 2000AD cover without logos and text, and even some making of features!

Right, I've got a Judge Dredd story to get done so catch you later!

L

THOUGHT BUBBLE 2010 REPORT!!!

....And it was gooood......

Third year in a row that I have had a FANTASTIC weekend at Thought Bubble! And a large portion of that is due to the incredible Lisa Wood and her team of very lovely folk! (Hi to the other Leigh!)

I don't know why, but for some reason I always seem to be accepted more at this convention, and sold a pile of stuff! Next time I'll be sure to bring a bigger variety of prints, as I was surprised how popular the zombie ones were.

Once again, I met too many cool people to mention, but a shout out to my "neighbour", 2000AD legendary artist D'Israeli (a guy I've wanted to meet for a long time!) and his lovely girlfriend, and also hi to the folks of the Monkey On My Back podcast who I had a great chat with and shared my tasty, tasty doughnuts (I won't mention that they were queuing for D'Iraeli, not me *ahem*)!

The day ended with one of the best kormas I've ever had with some good friends, and a great aftershow party where, as usual, I couldn't find the time to talk with everyone I wanted to.

Here's a compilation of all but two of the sketches I did that day, with some close ups of my favourites. Enjoy, and see you there next year!

(PS: And thanks for all the thumbs up to the hat! It shall return next year!)

L

LEEDS THOUGHT BUBBLE 2010!!!

Yup, it's that time of year again where I attend one of my favourite cons of the year!

As always I'll be selling books, doing FREE head sketches, and I'll see if I have time to do any inked drawings to sell.

Also, I'd like to add that I shall be trying out a new hat look that day, so please be honest and tell me if I pull it off or not....

So I'll see you guys this Saturday 20th November! You can find all the details for this wonderful event here!

L

THE MAKING OF THE 2000AD PROG 1709 COVER!!!

ALRIGHTY! We're back to normal business after an INSANE time....Again I'd like to thank everyone for their kind messages. I'll admit that the amount of attention around the net STUNNED Niki and I, but it's genuinely heartwarming to know that there's so many lovely folk out there.

Ok, I'm a week late posting about this for obvious reasons, but the final part of Defoe: A Murder of Angels appeared in last week's 2000AD Prog 1709 (that you'll still be able to find in all good comic shops!). I had a lot of fun doing this cover so read on....

Right, I actually screwed up with this first rough idea that I submitted months earlier. It was going to be a cool Bernie Wrightson-esque image with the two monsters fighting and Defoe jumping in. BUT, as I was about to draw it, I realized that I bollocked up the timing, as it showed a character that DIED the previous episode.....
So after begging for Tharg's forgiveness, he suggested a cover with the lizard angel about to kill Defoe, and so I had a think on the train, and scribbled down these two ideas on the move...
When I got home, I did them in more detail and sent them to the Big Kahuna, who approved the first idea....

Here's the loose pencils....
And here's the inks, which I THOUGHT were fine, but then I decided I'd send it to Pat Mills one weekend as we were talking, who suggested I show more of Defoe's face...
And he was right (plus you don't argue with the creator of 2000AD!), so here's a patch I did to digitally paste over the original.

I really enjoyed colouring this piece. I had to research various lizard skins for it...
And here's the two different backgrounds I offered. Luckily they went for the red version which I thought "popped" more!

Finally it was then sent to 2000AD designer Pye Parr, who did a cool job adding the logo and text which you can see at the top of this post!

Ok, more "Making of" posts coming up over the next week. Take care for now!

L

AND THE ANSWER WAS.....

OF COURSE SHE SAID YES!!! Did you not see me in the comic?! Im dreamy!

Seriously, thank you so much for all the kind words guys. It was a bit of a headache to plan as I didnt have time to do the lettering before I left to meet her in Shanghai. I had to draft in my good mate, 2000AD/MARVEL/DYNAMITE letterer Simon Bowland, as well as sneaking away to mess around with the coloring a bit on my other mates laptop, and getting up at dawn to silently finish it whilst she was asleep in bed 3 feet away from me.

The final reveal was done in a lovely hotel room overlooking the incredible view of the Tokyo skyline at night!

Back to work in a couple of days so catch you soon you lovely people!

Leigh and Niki (The future Mrs Gallagher)

A message for Niki.... (UPDATED!)

(Click to enlarge.)

(UPDATE: WE GOT MARRIED! CLICK HERE!)

I MET SIMON PEGG!!!

It was worth queuing up 3 hours in the cold for.

Seriously, I NEVER usually do stuff like this. I'm not generally the type to get wowed by celebrities, but this was different. Simon Pegg is now, rightly so, a massive name in Hollywood, but one show will always remain special to people like me: SPACED.

Much like his character, Tim, I too was living in a house full of ...strange...people, whilst desperately trying to break into the comic book business. So the episode where he finally gets his big break at "Dark Star Comics" (basically 2000AD) meant a lot to me and gave me hope for the future (Yes, I KNOW it's bloody made up!).

So, here I am, years later, finally working for 2000AD myself, and I just wanted to express my gratitude to him by giving him a drawing of him, as a mutant, with his favourite character, Strontium Dog. The line he's saying riffs off one of the famous 2000AD references in the show.

I gave it to him as he was signing copies of his new book, "Nerd Do Well" in Liverpool's Waterstones, and as you can tell from the photo, he seemed to like it! Even gave me a very cool shout out on Twitter ....which I'm still not joining despite everyone poking the crap out of me about it...

I love it when you meet one of your heroes, and they're just as cool in real life.

L

THE GET WELL CARLOS PROJECT!!!

Here's yet another victim of my deadlines--not getting a chance to report on this piece.

Ok, so a while back writer, and now Saint, Mark J Howard got in touch with a host of 2000AD fans and creators, to do an unbelievably nice thing for the legendary artist Carlos Ezquerra, who was in recovery from Lung Cancer.

The project was to create a comic with each contributer doing a page, depicting whatever they wanted to, as long as it expressed what they felt toward Carlos. My illustration is above, but my god, this was just one of many, and it's times like this that makes you proud of the fanbase. You can follow the thread on the 2000AD boards here.

For a limited time, you can download the public pdf of the full comic HERE or HERE. And if you choose to download, they ask that you please donate to a Cancer charity.

Enjoy the comic. It really is a great read. Thanks!

UPDATE: Also there is a second volume being put together now, just not in secret and with a longer deadline so we should be able to scoop up anyone else who wants to contribute.

L