#137: In Review

What I'm working on, and what I worked on in 2023

ALL THE LATEST

Notice: this will be the final Declarations of the year. I’ll be taking an extra week off for the Christmas break so will return on January 2nd.

-I returned from my trip to GalaxyCon Columbus last week and jumped on various bits and bobs needing addressing; story notes, art edits and a slew of promo interviews. Most notably, I did some art notes on my last pages of ALIEN as well as the lettering notes for Issue Four which means I’m all wrapped!

-Sent in a new, more fleshed out outline for PROJECT RAVEN. Assuming it’s approved, I’m going to have a lot of fun with this.

-Working on a couple of Marvel covers this week. Also took on a cover gig for a Marvel mini that will be very different. One of those surprising/unique challenges that drops in your lap every now and then. Will likely be going a cover for PROJECT EMERALD next week along with sending in the pitch outline.

-I finally finished an actual commission I’ve owed for ages. I have about 4 more on a list that I’ve just been too busy to get through but glad to get one scratched off that list for now. Really like this BATMAN one, wanted to play with shapes a bit with all the architecture and using that cape. Might colour this for fun over the holidays.

-Screenrant named MOON KNIGHT: FROM THE DEAD as one of the best Marvel reads in a day along with some stone-cold classics. Great company to be in.

-A couple of months ago, I did a in-depth interview with my local radio station. Had I known it was a video interview, I might have dressed the part, so if you want to see a frumpy man talk about his origins from County Clare, click here.

-My good friend Simone D’Armini is finally releasing his MACBETH: A TALE OF HORROR with writer Stefano Ascari from Dark Horse Comics. Simone has been working on this in some capacity for a long long time so I’m delighted to see it finally come together. It’s out tomorrow I believe, so tell your local retailer to get a copy, or there’s also the Amazons if you’re so inclined. As it happens, I’m going to do a new TAPE DEC with Simone, talking about out ELEKTRA: BLACK WHITE & BLOOD story, with a little preview of his Macbeth book. Going live 8PM GMT/3PM EST on Sunday 17th over on my YouTube channel.

That’ll be December taken care of, now I need to figure out who to talk to in January!

END OF YEAR REVIEW

2023 was a busy year on all fronts

To the best of my recollection, I worked out all my cover work that was published in 2023 adding up to 48. Down 1 from from last year, but I think I did more writing [a lot of ALIEN] and more sequential pages this year. The year of covers is compromised of 18 Marvel covers, 6 for AWA, 1 Skybound cover, 2 IDW [/STAR TREK] covers, 2 Boom covers and 18 Image covers [12 for TIME BEFORE TIME, 6 for OLD DOG] and 1 cover for David Harper’s SKTCHD book. No DC again this year.

I of course, wrote a lot of ALIEN for Marvel as well as a shaor story for the CRYPT Halloween Special. Bid my part to wrap up TIME BEFORE TIME with Rory McConville &co and wrote/drew 4 whole issues of OLD DOG. All in all, a pretty productive year!

Next year, THUNDERCATS replaces my ALIEN slate, PROJECT RAVEN replaces OLD DOG for the first half of the year [though working on OLD DOG OPERATIONS, see below] and I’ll be working on a creator owned with an artist [calling PROJECT ARCA for now].

GALAXYCON

I had an absolute blast at Galaxycon, where I experimented with doing full figure commissions at a show again. I was happy with the results, but it was very hard to work on more detailed pieces and stop every 3 minutes or so to sign stuff so I dunno if I’ll do it again. Depends on the show, I guess.

Commissions from GalaxyCon Columbus

Overall, it was a great time, brilliant to hag with old friends and new , namely our fearless Cadence leader Paolo Belfiore, as well as Gavin Guidry, Marco Rudy, Kyle Higgins, Vanesa Del Rey, Cory Smith, Liana Kangas, Ron Marz and more. Got to have a whiskey with Jeffrey Combs [Weyoun from Star Trek] and had a chat with Daredevil [Charlie Cox] himself!

Found out Shane MacGowan died while The Pogues were played in a dive bar and got to eat late night pizza under the glare of Vigo the Carpathian himself. All in all, a notable trip.

Shout out to Decolytes [Declarations readers] Cory and Geoffrey for coming up to my table at the show. Gonna make it a rule that Decolytes who I meet in person get shout-outs in the newsletter :)

ALIEN

As I said earlier, I am now officially wrapped on ALIEN. Andrea Broccardo celebrated by jetting off to a con in Japan! It’s strange to wrap two of my longer series within a couple of months just as the year itself wraps up, but also feeling a great sense of accomplishment. With ALIEN specifically, I set out to tell a bigger, more expansive story beyond one arc and really feel like we achieved that goal. So much of that came down to the contributions of others, but I’m glad I didn’t fumble the ball before passing it to them. Huge thanks to Andrea, Triona Farrell, Ruth Redmond, Danny Earls, Clayton Cowles and editors Anita Oyoke, Lindsey Cohick and most importantly; Sarah Brunstad for offering me the gig in the first place and working with me on every step to make the best book we could.

Issue Two is out on the 20th, here’s one of my pages from the issue.

This was some gruesome fun to work on.

THUNDERCATS

Doing the promo rounds for THUNDERCATS. Have done a handful of website interviews. I was on the Near Mint livestream talking THUNDERCATS last week…

I’ve handed in my script for Issue Two, feeling pretty good about it. Surprised to find WilyKit is a lot more fun to write than I was expecting. Drew Moss’s pages are looking great, really exciting to see them filter into my inbox. I’ve handed in the inks for my covers for Issue Three and Issue Four. As a special treat for you guys, here’s my cover for Issue Two.

DO NOT SHARE THIS ONLINE, THIS IS FOR YOU DECOLYTES ALONE

BONUS! A reader at Galaxycon gifted me a SWORD OF OMENS!!!!

HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

OLD DOG

I got a couple more headsketches for the DOSSIER done [below], just a couple more left to do that I’ll get done over Christmas. I updated backers with a revised delivery date of March.

OLD DOG DOSSIER headsketches

I also used my recent trip to GalaxyCon to recruit for my new OLD DOG project, now calling it OPERERATIONS [unless CASE FILES is better…? What do ye think?]. Locked some stuff down. Will update when I can.

Also have a new cover to work on over the holidays. Looking forward to it. Just posted a livestream recording of me colouring the two pieces for the trading cards for the DOSSIER Kickstarter.

PROCESS

My OBI WAN cover came out a week or so ago and I didn’t have time to get into it last time, so here’s a little process piece about it.

This cover was offered to me in an unusual way; essentially I was asked to take a still from the OBI WAN show and make it a cover. Not an exact still, but taking a scene and making it presentable as a cover. I was asked for Vader in his throne room [below]. Really, the composition work was essentially already done in the brief itself.

So just draw Vader sitting there? Done! Below is my original layout. Loved the idea of playing with that big black negative space and a sliver of colour. However Marvel asked to zoom in a little on Vader. A shame, as I think this composition would have been nice and bold but I get it, they’d like to see Vader on the cover. The monsters.

Roughs

Didn’t scan the pencils, sorry, but it as all just figuring out the size of Vader and the throne, etc. I found some decent replica reference online to get a better look at the throne, found a 3D model online to help me get the Vader model right and got inking.

I don’t always show the colouring without ink, as I’m looking at the inks as I colour, but here’s some stages with the inks off so ye can get an idea of how much work is done under them. Below are my colour-corrected flats. My assistant Tatjana Segelken will flat with colours picked from my layouts but then I’ll go in and fiddle with them a bit before painting. Next, you can see the painting I did in the extreme background, the volcanos and such. Then I rendered the room and Vader himself.

Flats, rendering window, rendering room/Vader

Here’s the final piece. I did all my colour holds [some painting in there too] and if you notice, added some selective orange highlights to Vader and the room.

In a way, this was an easier cover from a drawing point of view as the composition was essentially delivered to me, but from a colouring point of view I really tried to build up some richness to the piece in the rendering and more intense colours to bounce off all the dark objects. Quite happy with this one.

OUT SOON

December 13th

DARK RIDE #10 [VC]

December 20th

ALIEN #2 [W]

December 27th

THE RIBBON QUEEN #6 [C]

January 17th

ALIEN #3 [W]

January 31st

THE RIBBON QUEEN #7 [C]