For more than 40 years, 2000 AD has dazzled the optical receptors of millions of Earthlets with its unique covers – 2000 AD Covers Uncovered goes behind-the-scenes and reveals how some of the industry’s top artists craft their cover art for the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic!

It’s time to join writer Kek-W and series artist Dave Kendall for more terrors and undead delights when The Dark Judges – The Fall Of Deadworld Book Two is released on 28 November.

It’s the latest terrifying instalment in The Dark Judges saga, as the four horsemen of the horror apocalypse continue to turn their world into the Necropolis we all know it becomes.

But first, cast your fearful eyes over the exclusive cover for the collection of fear-filled fabulousness as Dave Kendall talks us through its creation. It all began when Dave suggested a new cover for this collection….

The second volume of The Fall of Deadworld was due out and I suggested I do a cover to the volume. Keith Richardson was in charge of this project. Unlike the first volume’s cover, which was the 2000 AD cover for Dreams of Deadworld, this would be an exclusive for the book.

(Rough number 1 – Every time we play… he always has to be black)

My initial thought was that we’d continue a theme. On the first book, we have the three Lieutenants of Death standing in front of his statue. The one we see in Death lives. With this one, I played on the chess game featured in the story and have real Death manipulating simulacrums of his lieutenants on a chessboard.

I provided a couple of digital roughs and the second one was chosen

(Rough number 2 – For my next move, Judge Fire to the pit of skulls of my enemiessss)

The next part of the process was to plan the cover on a template of the cover. Just to make sure that the main elements didn’t clash with the text of the cover. Like my blueline process for the strip, I do this in Clip Studio Paint. In my opinion a far superior drawing program to Photoshop.

(Blue line in Clip Studio – what’s the betting he cheats?)

Once this was OK’d I transferred the image to Bristol board for the final pencils.

I pencilled this out enhancing the blue line image as I drew. This is the same process as my strip work. For every page there’s a pencil version.

(Final pencil version – Can we just play Monopoly next time?)

For the final version, I decided that I wanted this to be a traditional painting.

Once the pencils were complete I printed them on a high-grade smooth watercolour paper. This was then glued to MDF and then coated with Acrylic Matte Medium. This prevents the Acrylic paint from sinking into the paper. It was then a process of building up the paints until we reach the final finished painting.

Long story short, I roughly block in an under-painting then build up mid-range, shadows and finally highlights. Unfortunately, I have no process shots of this stage, but it’s a careful refinement of three or four stages.

I then scan into Photoshop and tweak the values of the image to give me the final cover image.

(Final cover – the crime is life, the sentence is chesssssss)

There’s always stuff I can change. I feel the cover printed a little darker to the final image. It might have required a higher contrast setting or a tweak to the values. I’m not sure. The printing process can be a strange old beast. There are reams of info on the cmyk process.

Overall I’m really pleased with it. There are always areas that could have been approached differently but a piece of art is never truly complete and inevitably it has to be let go.

(Final printed cover – Checkmate to Judge Death and Dave Kendall)

Wow… that’s what I love about artists… the creation of something so amazing as the final cover from initial idea to finished product and yet there’s still that nagging doubt, like the fingers of a new Dark Judge grabbing at you, that there can be something else, some improvement…

But when you see the finished cover, I think we can all agree that it’s a beauty alright, with that undead pin-up himself, Judge Death taking centre-stage in a cover to scream at you from the shelves!

Thanks to Dave Kendall for taking the time to go through that amazing cover.

The latest series of The Fall of Deadworld, ‘Doomed’, is playing out right now in 2000 AD and The Dark Judges – The Fall Of Deadworld Book Two is out on 28 November. Buy it or we’ll ssssssend the boyssssss round!