otaking77077

Summer '24 print- Alien: MONDAY!

Added 2024-09-13 18:44:19 +0000 UTC

Here's a typical day on the mining vessel Thanatos. Let's hope nothing bad happens to them!

As always, layout by me and Maki, anatomy fixups and colour grading by Maki, final illustration by me. This print will be flying out to all of you in the Elite tier soon, so please make sure your addresses are correct so that yours doesn't go spiralling off into deep space.

Working on this made me realise how much I enjoy doing concept art-style backgrounds! I used to paint tons of them back in my Deviantart days (does that site still exist??) and through my job as concept artist on Prisoner Zero in Australia. I wanted to get loads of rim lighting on it, and I remembered some really nice looking Aliens comic books that we used to get in the UK back in 1991 that had a beautiful airbrushed style with lots of highlights. I tracked them down again online for reference, and they're by an airbrush artist by the name of Den Beauvais. Some really nice stuff.

-Paul

↑ The highlights on this page are particularly good! As you can see, it was a kind of mature rated comic, but then again it was aimed at older audiences and based on a rated-R movie that released two years before. It even had swearing in it!

After Den Beauvais' run, the story continued but now with art by Sam Keith. I remember being hugely disappointed in the style change!

What on Earth is going on here?

Ironically, I would go on to really like Sam Keith's art for his series The Maxx (You might remember the animated adaptation from MTV in the 90s), so I guess it was just the shock of switching art styles so drastically.

Take a look!