Vampire Nazis vs The British Secret Service

Hello all.

Graeme has allowed to steal his slot today to give a shout out that Vampire Vixens of the Wehrmacht, my own self published project is finally out in the wild. 

The original print run completely sold out on the Saturday of Glasgow Comic Con but I have a second run which is available via mail order (see the contact the address at the bottom of the flyer), Forbidden Planet Glasgow and I'm also waiting to hear back from shops in Edinburgh.

The second Vampire Vixens escapade is currently under way and due for release late next year.

A recent review is attached. Cheers.

http://2000ad.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/review-vampire-vixens-of-the-wehrmacht-2/

You can find more on this and other projects here: http://alexronald68.blogspot.co.uk/

It's Goodnight from me

Today is my last on Scotch Corner, (no cheering at the back there)
Since this is my last day, I thought I'd do something slightly different. My newest image from Vampire Vixens and the oldest drawing I still have.

This latest shot from Vixens has our heroes on-route to Germany in an RAF Lancaster. Needless to say our coquettish vamp is pressing the Chaplain's buttons and he really doesn't like it.

I've got a folder stuffed with old art sketches from school. and this is one of the oldest I still have. I was about 11 when I did this and as you can imagine back in the late 70's /early 80's, Star Wars was everything. I'm pretty sure I copied this pic from an image within the Empire novel which had a photo section when It was first published. I stupidly read the book before I saw the film and discovered the shock Vader/Luke revelation that way rather than on screen.

All that remains is to say thanks to Graeme for giving me a shot at the blog for the last couple of years, best wishes to fellow bloggers, Simon, Gary, Jon, Andy and Thomas, some of the best bunch of Scottish artists I've had the pleasure of sharing a blog with and best wishes to the Scotch Corner viewers for a Merry Christmas and a great 2013.

Best

Alex

Berzerker

If you get the chance to see the Outpost prequel comic packaged with the iPhone game, you might notice a sneak peak at the new villains of the third movie in the editorial feature.
The Berzerkers are Nazi zombies bred for war. No shambling corpses, these guys are undead velociraptors in uniform.
This is my pre production painting of the Berzerker from last year. In the new movie out in 2013, the Berzerker will be played by mixed martial artist, James (The Colossus) Thomson.

Dredd Banger

When looking for something to post, I found this one which Is from a Dredd strip I worked on over Christmas many moons ago. A tenuous link but there you go.

Copyright Rebellion.

"I pray for my enemy"

"I pray they go to Hell!"

My favourite comic character after Dredd. The super Hero Hunter Marshal Law. Looking forward to the new collected DC volume next year.

Hell Ride

Another one of my back burner projects is a cover painting of the Marvel character, Ghost Rider.
In preparation for this I built a very quick model of the bike.
I based this on a broad range of references from the comics. Sometimes the bike is drawn quite fantastical and sometimes more conventional, it just depend on the style of the artist who's drawing the strip at the time. My favourite had to be the version with the evil skull face plate and I took my lead from that.

Rolling back the years

I found this online a while back. Dredd over the years since 1977.
My version of him appears in 1998 .

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God's hitman

He's a holy man who hunts demons but he's no angel himself and there's no rest for the wicked.

Please check out the Vixens Facebook page this month for your chance to win a VVW T shirt.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vampire-Vixens-of-the-Wehrmacht/179230265443902

Raiders of the lost Arc-hives

Unearthed this really old sketch from the early 2000's. It was for a TV show that speculated what if dinosaurs didn't die out, how would they evolve and would they have experienced periods similar to humans, Bronze Age, Medieval etc.

Outpost defence

Apart from having some art duties on the Outpost films, I also worked on this title page image for the ipad/iphone game.

The Glasgow Mafia

Since I  have a touch of OCD, I tend to hoard a lot of stuff from years gone by.
This is a press clipping from May 1993 and features some od Scotland's established and up and coming talent of the time. When this article appeared I had been completely unaware that many of the names I knew  from British comics were Scots and living in and around Glasgow.

Back Row: Rob McCallum, Cory MacRae, Jim Alexander, Colin MacNeil
Bottom Row: Jon Beeston, Dave, Alexander, John McShane, Robbie Morrison, Frank Quietly

Double trouble

This is one of the line sketches done last summer for an art competition on The Vampire vixens Facebook page. 

This was the prize for a a couple of guys from Wales who produce Dexter's Half Dozen, a similarly occult themed comic. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dexters-Half-Dozen/133441783431659



I'm planning to get some very limited edition Vixens T shirts into the next competition, hopefully before the end of the year.

"What a piece of junk!"

Probably my favourite Sci-fi space ship ever, the Millenium Falcon. I've attached sheet below showing a few basic steps to the process used to make the model in 3D. Blueprint plans of the front, side and top elevation help to create relatively accurate model in Maya. Again it's just the basic shape of the vehicle that's needed because the detailing all comes in the painting.

Tatooine Orbit

Just for the fun of it I spent a couple of nights this week doing a Star Wars illo, something that looked as screen authentic as possible. I built a very basic Star Destroyer over the course of a lunchtime at work. There are many Star Wars blueprints available online and if you stick these images on planes in the X/Y/Z views within a modelling package, you will have the correct scale and proportions in no time. In the evening I slapped on some textures to the corresponding areas and very quickly the model looks a lot more complex than it actually is. The starfield was made up using a tutorial and the planet was a simple gradient with ground and cloud colours applied with hard brush strokes slighly motion blurred and hand smudged.

Vampire Vixens, Axed!

Is scream queen Libyenah for the chop, or will she merely give a hand to the Nazi cause? If only she had a 'weapon' to defend herself.

Man with a mission

An old page from Missionary Man, Promised Land. Published in 2000ad in the late 90's

Hande Hoche

More nonsense from The Vampire Vixens of the Wehrmacht this week. Hans the former circus strongman gets caught short by Vixen Libyenah. He should have kept to lifting weights instead of playing with the bad boys.

M's predecessor?

George Bentley is the boss of the Special Occult Executive (SOE) in Vampire Vixens of the Wehrmacht, a sly and aloof individual who keeps his cards close to his chest. He's a WW2 version of James Bond's M character but no where near as benign. In the scenes below he is giving a briefing to assembled heads of the military. When it comes to WW2 as a subject matter I've quickly found out that there are many experts out there. I'll hold my hand up and admit I am not one of these although I know enough to get by with what I'm attempting to do. I this case I posted these images up on my own site and was quickly corrected by a chap that colour projectors weren't around in WW2. I checked it out and found he was completely right. Suprisingly he didn't point out there were no Vampires either:)

School of the Damned

This is the cover painting for School of the Damned issue 5. The comic is published by Glasgow's Black Hearted Press and features some classic characters from horror literature and films. Have a look at their site to find out more. http://www.schoolofthedamned.com/
All the covers for School of the Damned are adaptions of classic comic book covers from the past. In this case the pose is based on an old 1970's edition of Wonder Woman 199. When painting it, I tried to echo the look of the Hammer House of Horror magazines also from the 1970's (The publisher price and issue number is a placeholder, I know it's the wrong number)

Film 4 Frightfest, London 2012

From August 23rd-27th, Frightfest takes place at the Empire Cinema in London's Leicester Square.

http://www.frightfest.co.uk/

Outpost Black Sun gets it's big screen debut as part of the festival then on the 27th the film gets it's UK DVD release.

http://www.play.com/DVD/Blu-ray/4-/31970612/0/Outpost-2-Black-Sun/ListingDetails.html

To tie in with the movie, the secret history of the Nazi's attempt to create an invincible army of the undead will be released as a digital comic on ipad and iphone formats.

Originally planned as the pre-title sequence to the movie, the WW2 based flashback was turned into a 24 page fully painted comic book by myself, the film writer Rae Brunton, Director Steve Barker and letterer Jim Campbell.

Check in at  the Outpost FB page for more info on the movie, the comic and the Iphone game.

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/outpostthemovies