A hard day's fight!

A couple of weeks back I was contacted by the Liverpool Roller Birds who wanted a design to promote their upcoming roller derby matches. The event itself is called 'A Hard Day's Fight' and the thought of not using the design from the Beatles album 'A Hard Day's Night' as a starting point seemed criminal. So having the concept approved I proceeded to illustrate all twenty members of the group all with the hallmarks of a successful roller derby.

So we have the poster with all the information for the derby and more in keeping with the original album is the T-Shirt design. I must point out that the Liverpool Roller Birds logo was supplied to me as you see it and I have no idea who designed and illustrated it for them? If you are in area on the 13th November make sure you drop by and catch the action.

Das Schwarze Auge

Hey. Another cover for my friends at Ulisses Spiele. Click it to see it larger.


(C)2010 Jon Hodgson

Hyperbolus - another character from 'Peace'

This fine fellow is Hyperbolus, a demagogue who dominated ancient Athens after the death of Pericles. He thought that the Peloponnese war against Sparta would be a good idea... He was wrong.

Roger! Roger!

Experimented with my penciling style on these sample pages. I went for a much more open and slightly cartoony style than i would normally do in an attempt to keep more in line with the Star Wars: Clone Wars comics/cartoons. Looking at it now i think, subconsciously, in terms of storytelling i also carried the simplicity over to the handling of content within the panels too. Probably not a style that i would default to but it was a nice change of pace to try and experiment with.

Monkey Magic!

An erotic sketch of sorts from a European event (Fumetterni, I believe?) The brief was Monkey. Woman. Machine. Well, how could I refuse? This is a rough layout for the finished commission and certainly a pin-up I would like to work up into colour sometime. Enjoy!

Back!

The back print from the samurai fellow from last week, this week. I haven't done too many dragons in my time - a fantasy staple - despite the main thrust of my work. For a change nice to not have to worry about human anatomy! The company supplied the kanji in the background there, which is the symbol for 'samurai'. © Spiral Direct 2010

Chinook

I see a lot of these flying about, I keep a pair of binoculars in my studio as I get a fair amount of passing air traffic. Chinooks are great, they look great and they sound proper war film great, wokka wokka wokka wokka wokka wokka wokka wokka etc. (substitute your own helicopter noise as you see fit). Once again I know no technical details about the craft but Wikipedia have all those kind of facts should you wish to know them.

The interesting thing for me on this piece was that for a change I coloured it before I inked it. I lightly penciled out the shape of the helicopter and then set to work with my colour Promarker pens. Once I was happy with it in colour I added in the ink work. Back to front but a fun experiment.

Jonday - late as ever...

Almost missed Monday.

This is a very VERY old one - a painting from a show some friends and I had in Nottingham back in 1996 or 97 or so. It was called "Some Painting" and was shown at the Bonnington Gallery.



Its about 3 feet by 4 feet, acrylic on MDF.

The Brooklyn of Tomorrow

So I'm using a bit of idle time to work on the new Lilly Mackenzie story. I've got 11 pages done so far so I should be able to start it solidly with a 5 page run before lapsing back into the more sustainable page a week . So I won't tell you what this is except it's my version of Brooklyn in the 23rd century. Those of you who know the borough will get the various locations I'm using.

Lilly Mackenzie & the Mines of Paros doesn't have a definite start date, but I'm hoping to get it onto a very high profile platform indeed. More as and when....

The Main Man

A quick Lobo sketch this week. Always liked both the Alan Grant version and the (silly) JLA version - quiet different takes but both worked well. I came across some bumf on the net about Guy Ritchie being attached as director to the movie version (if it ever gets made) - article was a good few months old so who knows if that is still the case or not. So i guess we can expect to see him as a bare-knuckle boxer at some point too.

Poison Ivy. Sketch.

Another bit of cheesecake. Poison Ivy sketch from a recent convention.

Currently in Poznan, Poland with Mhairi. I will be signing in Berlin at the Modern Graphics store in Europa-Center this Saturday at 2pm. Normal service will be resumed next week!

Zombie Samurai

A T-shirt design for Spiral direct done relatively recently (pretty fast turnaround with Spiral from artwork to website and sales, for a change). Again, there was a front and back design for the job, so next week you'll get the rear-view. (C) Spiral Direct 2010

Judge Dredd Megazine #301

As Tom mentioned last week my first ever work on Judge Dredd is in the shops as of tomorrow (18th), please go to your newsagent or magazine provider of choice and purchase a copy. Not only do you get to see my work inked by fellow Scotch Corner member Gary Erskine but you also get Simon's story 'Lily MacKenzie and the Mines of Charybdis'. So that's three Scotch Corner contributors all in the same place at once! Just look out for the stunning cover by fellow Scotsman Frank Quitely!

Carrying a big box of polystyrene cups I cowered into the Mighty Tharg's office and asked if I could show the pencils to the first page this week, seeing through my attempted sweetener he sent me on my way with a Rigellian Hotshot but graciously agreed to my request.


©2010 Rebellion

Jonday Artrage hexperimentz

Some experiments in ArtRage:


Embiggenator:



Embiggerizor:


There's a video of the creation of this piece here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaG10yOxMYw

Socrates of Athens

Socrates is SO easy to draw! Seriously go Google some images of Socrates, he's an absolute gift.

I'll be the Judge of that

Graeme's first Judge Dredd strip (inked by Gary i believe) is due out round about now (or possibly already - haven't been in a newsagents for a bit to have a look and pick it up yet). So i thought i would do a Dredd sketch this week as an excuse to mention it - so look out for it and go buy it! Anyhoo, ended up dropping the sketch into artrage as i hadn't played with that for a while and coloured-painted it up there. Still not sure about the end result - some bits i like, other bits i don't but happy enough with it for a quick colour doodle. Another wee Dredd (and Anderson) pencil sketch below.

Star Wars. X-Wing Rogue Squadron cover.

Here is my third cover for the Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron mini-series for Dark Horse Comics. Love Star Wars and the opportunity to contribute to the legacy was too good to pass up. I particularly like this image because of the fighters flying over a desert rather than the traditional space environment.

AXIS

A German Gebirgsjager, or mountain-ranger, from WWII. Another painting done in my down-time to try freeing up some of my bad habits and processes. I really should splash some colour about one week soon;)

A study in ink...

Here's a sketch commission I finished last week for Jess Power and her fan site Benedict Cumberbatch Online. Benedict has been wowing TV viewers here in the UK with his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the three feature length episodes that has run on BBC1 on Sunday nights. (UK residents can still see it on the BBC iPlayer for the rest of this week). Its been a great mini series and I'm hoping that more will be commissioned soon, if the reviews have anything to say on the matter it will already have been done.

Jess tells me that she is running a competition on the site to win this sketch so for those with a love of Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch or indeed my sketches head here and enter. The competition runs until mid-September.

Jonday - Moar Azuran

So work continues apace on upcoming FB game Trials of Azuran (the pre-app for Battle of Azuran). Check it out here.



(C)2010 Project Quest Ltd

No embigginator this week, since it is at maximum embiggenation already.

The Characters of Peace Part1

This is the great Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes. He's one of the leads in this book PEACE that I'm doing with Martin Millar. In fact the book is named after his play 'Peace' the production of which is at the core of this story.

I'm using this character creation phase to experiment a bit with different colouring techniques.

It's good to grab these opportunities while you can

Feeling Blue

Another wee experiment this week with a stylised self-portrait. Bit of a mixed-media project, the main outline drawing is in pencil and was then painted over with watercolour. I then scanned in the painting and brightened up the reflection on the glasses and added the glow effect in photoshop. Can't think of a project i would ever use this style on but think it worked fine as an experiment.

Polly. Character design.

Occasionally I have to work up some character designs for various projects. Polly here is part of a commission for an educational body and will hopefully be seen publically in a few weeks when everything is finalised. Lots of fun working up this character. Fairly loose brief for her but she did need to wear a lab coat, of sorts. Kept her ethnicity a bit ambiguous. There is a hint of a possible Asian or Indian parentage. With current overseas student diversity it was a difficult choice to pick just one defining look for Polly so some artistic license was called for. Her colleague Harvey (not shown) is a ginger-haired Scottish student so the subtle exotic choice for Polly created more of a balance.



Pleased with her shoes. The sneakers were a particularly cool touch.

More 40s Portraiture

Another stab at doing some simple portrait work in a 30s/40s style. Its a period I like just now, visuals wise, and was good to try slapping paint around a bit more freely than I usually do (pixel paint, not the wet kind). My work is typically very fiddly very quickly and I get drawn into finishing areas, rather than working on the whole more generally and bringing the image together at the end. Concentrated on doing that this time. The trick is to bring the experiment into the paid work, eh?

Clobberin' time!

Been a bit poorly this last week (oh poor me) so here's a watercolour sketch from a few years back. Should hope to be back at my drawing board soon.

Jonday - Dr Banner

Hey. Monday again.

So I'm hard at work providing tons and tons of art assets for a new Facebook game called Battle of Azuran. The pre app, entitled Trials of Azuran should launch in a matter of weeks, all being well. Here's the web banner wot I done for it. At the top there's what I supplied, below with the logo added.

Cheers!



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