2000AD PROG 1704 COVER PROCESS!!!

I AM A TOOL.

Yeah, you heard me. This was one of those moments where I should listen to my own advice and know that YOU ARE NEVER AS GOOD AS WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE!!! Read on....

Ok, this is the cover process for this weeks issue of 2000AD. I wanted to depict a scene with Defoe fighting his now zombified ex comrade, The Spiriter, and especially show how the zombies are flying in this episode.

Here's my initial idea that I put down, but didn't submit to Tharg as I wasn't happy with the composition yet, but I was happy with the idea....
After a few obscene photos (that you will not see) I settled on this rough, that was approved by the boss....
Now, I decided early on that I wanted to do this as a digital painting, similar to that of the Defoe 1666 book collection cover found here. So with that in mind, I only pencilled this image, and darkened it up in Photoshop to paint over later....
And here, is what I thought was the finished cover painting that I was initially quite proud of. That, my friends, was the horrible trap I fell in to...

Much like a 10 year old boy running up to his parents to show off a crappy crayon picture of an anatomically incorrect donkey, I emailed this painting to Tharg shouting "Look at me! Look at how clever I am!"....to have him (quite rightly) REJECT IT!

"But...but...but...", I whined to my girlfriend, "He's NEVER turned down ANY of my work before!" (wipes nose on sleeve)

He was completely right of course. As he explained, he thought the image didn't look defined enough, looked a bit blobby, and that he generally preferred my line work. Looking at it now, I can see a DOZEN more problems with it, but it's strange how at the time, you're completely oblivious to them....
So the problem I had was how to add line work to a painting, which is harder than you'd think. Here's the ink line layer that I added in Photoshop, but realized quite early that we'd have to compromise and have it "half and half" and hope that the boss still went for it.
Here's the finished image! It took a while to clean it up around the line work, and as you can see I also recoloured various things that I realized were glaringly naff, including making Defoe's eyes a lot more defined. Thankfully this extra work paid off, and the boss approved it....
Being the impatient type, I did this quick cover mock up, using an older issue's text...
But of course by now, 2000AD have a lovely new redesign, and thanks to designer Simon Parr, here's the final cover that you can find in stores NOW!!! And that is a clever tagline...
And there ends my tale. The moral? DON'T BE A COCKY SOD!

L