Friday 17 June 2011

First look: Cover: Age of Darkness

Hello One and All!

Here's a nice clean version of the new, NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING ANTHOLOGY "Age of Darkness" from BL Publishing, showing a slightly evil Horus grinding an Imperial Fist Marine into the dirt (a certain Christian Dunn's idea - so BLAME HIM!):


(Above)
Horus is *starting* to go all evil,
so he's not TOTALLY spiked up yet...


As is usual, I started off with draughting out thumbnails - just two thumbnail ideas this time, as I had a pretty set idea as to how I wanted this cover to look. Luckily, Black Library were happy with them and chose the first thumbnail to work from. Then it was simply a case of paint, Paint, PAINT!

(Above)
The initial thumbnails,
BL correctly stated I'd made
his armour too purple -
n00b mistake ;)


(Above)
Horus Detail, armour heavily based
on the classic Adrian Smith
Horus vs Emperor art.


(Above)
OOF! BOOT TO THE HEAD!
See his panicked eye behind his eye-lens -
that's me, that is ;)


Cool, so that's the skinny on the new Heresy cover - I'm off to finish putting some more spikes on this here certain xenos cover I'm currently working on...

2 comments:

jake gumbleton said...

Boom ! Well done Neil me old fruit. I love the watercolour influence in the sky.
You have achieved tons of POP too!

Jacob Atienza said...

Amazing work! Do you utilize any 3D in your paintings?