judge dredd – PJ Holden's Blog

Dredd vs Dredd.

A Dredd head to head.

Quick blog post, back from a run and not enough time in the day, so I thought I’d have my final say on the Dredd movies.

1995 Stallone Dredd, the best depiction of Dredd’s world on screen (maybe the best we’ll ever have, though it is somewhat emeshed in 80s design). Also first 15 minutes or so, everything up until Stallone opens his mouth? Magic. I even like the uniform. I’d heard (but can’t verify) that after Demolition Man (a great film, packed to the gills with 2000adesque humour) Stallone wanted a straight action film, which is why the Danny Cannon Dredd movie was so humourless (aside from turning the character of Fergie into a comedy sidekick (a dreadful, dreadful comedy sidekick)).

2012 Karl Urban Dredd, the best depiction of the character of Dredd. The best relationship between Dredd and another Judge. The best cast, top to bottom. The best sort of day-in-the-life type story we’ll ever get. Great movie. Mega City 1 didn’t feel like Mega City 1 though. It was fine when they got into the block, but outside of it, it made mega city 1 feel like a precursor to the proper big meg.

Saw both in the cinema. Stallone’s Dredd saw it in Milton Keynes, while on a placement year at uni. The placement year last a couple of months (I hated Milton Keyns and bletchly, and not being able to drive in a place that needed a car) and I was so lonely, I saw it in the cinema twice, despite thinking it was terrible.

I also did some sample art and sent it to Judge Dredd Lawman of the Future, the kids comic spin off doomed to failure because the movie got an 18 rating and not a more kiddie friendly rating. My samples faired just as well as the movie did.

I can’t remember where I was when I saw the Urban Dredd movie, I do remember it was an empty theatre and I think I saw it twice and found it mesmerising (3d, slow motion, colours suddenly popping, just great looking), so much better and just loved it. Favourite line “It’s all deep end”. Just some great stuff in it.

But it hit and was promoted on the basis of 3d (I remember the poster was a big old DREDD 3D written across it) and I suspect they’d’ve loved a summer blockbuster and it just didn’t do that kind of business. Thought Karl Urban was great but lacked a strong enough chin, that’s my biggest complaint. Insufficient chin.

I bring this up, because when someone finds out you draw Judge Dredd this topic invariably comes up, so here’s possibly my final word on it.

Stallone Judge Dredd? A great 15 minutes. Karl Urban Dredd? fab film, great Dredd but lacking the madness of mega city 1.

Yesterday in Social media

Oh god, everything yesterday I posted was about the current madness – Trump’s Greenland demands. So I have nothing interesting to put here. (This is in fact a fascinating way to tell you’ve bought entirely into the doomosphere and I should endeavour to post more nonsense)

But, I can’t let this section go without something…

To which, I replied:

I like popadom preach because I too believe in the healing power of popadoms.

And something very cool to end on.

That’s it, that’s yer lot! Bye!

(Oh, a little postscript, where I can I will not embed a post from bluesky, I’ll just grab a screen shot and stick it there with a link, hopefully that should prevent any much later link rot, but Mark Garlick’s post has a video, and it’s impossible to screen grab that, so instead you get an embedded post.)

Dredd Chrysalids

Dredd Chrysalids page 5

Ok, took a detour, but back to it (can we get this finished before xmas? who knows… maybe last page will be drawn while downing mince pies and baileys…)

Ok, this page slightly disappointed I didn’t get more Judge Death in there – the dredd/death confrontation should be a bigger moment, but really feeling the limits of the 6 page format – still, one page to wrap this all together neatly… can I do it? we’ll see…

Let me know what you think – I’ve been pleasently surprised, there’s definately stuff where I’ve been rewriting it while drawing it, and it could be my mistake in the past to try and keep writing and drawing apart, and they (for me at least) are really rather tightly intwined.

Anyhue, here’s pencils and greywash …

Dredd Chrysalids page 4

And here we have it. The meat and bones. With a bit of luck the story is clear and it doesn’t just feel like a massive info-dump (and there’s enough info to get what I’m trying to do…)

I quite like the flashback framing panel, big rounded panel borders (all done in clip studio) here’s art without lettering and the pencils…

Dredd Chrysalids Page 3

This page changed a fair bit between my initial thoughts (writing/thumbs) panel 1, I flipped dredd so we’re seeming him rather than the Kleggs (we’ve seen them once, let’s get a good look at Dredd – beside the mystery of them being there/disappearing is better played off panel, I think – teleporter tech or something else? we’ll find out) last panel in particular, again, flipping from a wide shot – showing the entire scene to dredd’s face, keeps some mystery up and it’s good to get an emotion close to scared out of Dredd, isn’t it?

(As an aside: these are pretty tight for pencils from me, but if I were inking them and had more time [the constant enemy] I’d spend more time on some of those Dredd faces – this is me acknowledging that last face is not great)

Here’s all the back room stuff, you’ll see some tweaks I made from the pencils to the final here:

Dredd Chrysalids Page 2

Ok, page 2. I’m less happy with the script, the art and the letters. But sometimes you need to let a wound have air to heal.

The first lettered draft of this, I had dredd muttering those captions to himself, but it felt wrong. Popping them in a caption fixed that, reads more like a dredd script. But, for your delight I’ve kept that version of the lettered art below.

I’m not sure the lift reads as much like a lift as it needs to (if this were a paying gig, I’d be spending a bit more time figuring this out) and my lettering lack-of-skills are really starting to show here. But anyway. That’s page 2.

Dredd Chrysalids page 1

I’ve had a Dredd script on my hard drive for over a year, from an idea that’s over a decade old, and it’s just been sort of … sitting there… so I decided yesterday that, sod it, I’m never gonna polish it enough to expect 2000ad to print (let alone submit it to them for their consideration) so what I’d do instead is just pencil and letter it and post it here, hoping to get it all finished for xmas, so here’s page one lettered up along with behind the scenes commentary…

Ok, I’ll not post the script up, not until it’s all done, but here’s the layouts (which are largely impenetrable by anyone but me, and get more vague as they go along) page 1, as you can see, maps pretty close to the final pencils.

Lettering by me, using Evil Genius font from Blambot (home of many fine, fine fonts). Normally I’d ask Jim Campbell to letter any of these stupid ideas and I’ve no doubt he would’ve done a much better job than my hamfisted approach – but it’s nearly xmas and who wants to do unpaid work at this time of year? (Apart from me, apparently…)

Layouts:

And here’s the raw pencils for page 1… Scanned and tidied, added panel borders, resize a couple of things, made panel 2 push into panel 2 to just force the readers eye a bit to that panel (I had planned to have Dredd’s head here jut out of the panel, but that would have made it hard to place lettering)

I printed a template out in Clip Studio that shows me the safe area and some guidelines for drawing some standard panels, then pencil on that – I don’t pay too much attention to getting the borders exactly right as I take this into to clip studio and add panel borders digitally, ordinarily I’d then print that out – with the panels as blacklines and the pencils as a light cyan colour (ie a ‘blueline’ pencil) and ink over that, but since I won’t be inking this …

I decided to greywash it instead

And that’s it for page 1. If anyone fancies paying me to ink this page and owning the original artwork, you’re more than welcome to contact me at pjholden@gmail.com

Uniform

I cobbled my version of dredd together over 15 or so years of lifting and removing the bits of his uniform I liked and didn’t like.

The Stallone movie (*spit*) added a couple of things to my Dredd armour – notably a neat tidy collar and tiny little judicial badges (which I only give to fairly senior judges) and a lip or rim around the red part of the helmet…(and my Dredd helmet probably owes more to Steve Dillon than anyone)

(er.. collar badge missing in this picture).

I’m still working on how my eagle looks, but, for the most part it works like this…

Made up of two parts, the lower/inner part acts as the support for the arm, and the eagle – and then the eagle pivots/rests on top of it. Frequently colourists will colour both the same, but my preference is for the inner part to be a dark blue (darker than the uniform even)

I’m still playing with the gloves, but I tend to favour this style (Jock’s design is so strong that even for the brief window he drew Dredd some of his improvements to Dredd’s uniform rippled down through the years)

I imagine they’re velcro fastners. I’ve no idea what the hell they’d keep in those glove pockets -I mean two per glove is a silly size – maybe some bullets?

Belt pouches are fairly classic standard, button with a central ribbing…

Which I think are largely McMahon design.

I don’t think there’s much remarkable about my elbow or knee pads or boots – it’s all big chunky shapes, that look like they’ve been battered about – that’s my preference.

On last thing, and the reason for the blog post… I think – though I may be wrong – I just invented a new way to do one part of the uniform that.. well.. I’ve never been happy about.

The respirator – I’ve seen this done where the badge slides down and covers the mouth and where the entire bulged part where the badge is attached comes down. Which seems marginally more likely (while explaining why it has that bulge)

My new innovation… ta da! is to add pop out fins – now these pop out either side of the respirator when activated, and form a vacum seal around the face (and in fact, possibly they inflate a little – and may – if animated – look like they’re breathing with you).

It looks like this:

(NOT ACTUALLY Judge Dredd… this is another Judge)

I doubt anyone else will ever steal them from me, but even so, I’m happy knowing I adding something totally new to Dredd.

Out this week: 2000ad Prog 2131

I drew the cover and the strip “The world according to Chimpsky” about a hyper intelligent ape who lives in mega city 1, written by Kenneth Niemand. New droid, good dredd writer.

It looks like this

Publishing is a weird art, so this issue was drawn after the art in the prog that appeared before. And both were drawn over some time ago.

Matt wanted a cover for Chimpsky, and in an unusual note of convergence he suggested an idea I had already thought of – Chimpsky and Dredd facing off in the spider-man kiss pose (I imagine we both had exactly the same inspiration). Pretty pleased with how the cover turned out. It was pencilled, inked and coloured all within Clip Studio Paint.