I thought it would be fun to contrast Simon Pegg’s and Nick Frost’s characters from the two films in the same image, and I’m really pleased with how the compostion turned out. It all came together when I designed the police tape for the type, which felt like a nice graphical device to represent both films. And given the anticipation for Scott Pilgrim, I thought that a little Mike Cera in the corner would just give it that extra little something. Hope you like! Thanks to everyone for the support on Twitter for this already, and especially to Sam Clements at the Ritzy for all of his hard work spreading the word.

I also wanted to add a quick little note for anyone who’s read the little bio on the credits page. I’m not sure where they got this from, but I’ve never actually ‘worked’ for Simon Pegg, and certainly have never claimed to. I did, however, get commissioned by Working Title to produce some artwork for a test shoot at Shepperton Studios for forthcoming movie ‘Paul’, and Simon kindly signed it. Thought I should clear that up!

The choice of movies for the June event was Superman, Watchmen and Batman, and with Superman being perhaps my favourite movie of all time, let’s just say that I was more than happy to be involved. Amazingly, the Ritzy had managed to secure the last remaining 35mm print of Superman in the UK. It was a little wobbly and fairly scratched, but it was still great to experience the film in this way, as I was too young the first time around, and in fact Superman 3 was the first of the series that I was able to see on the big screen. Of course the film has flaws, but I think that John Barry’s great production design still stands up, even where the special effects don’t, and Geoffrey Unsworth’s cinematography does a brilliant job of distinguishing between the ‘three films in one’, namely Krypton, Smallville and Metropolis.

As you may know, the studio fired Richard Donner before he had chance to complete the sequel, and this has to be one of the worst decisions in cinema history, especially in the hindsight of the excellent Richard Donner cut of Superman 2, which I thoroughly recommend checking out if you’ve not seen it. They were so close to having it completed as they were shooting 1 and 2 at the simulataneously, and it’s so much truer to the character than the direction which Richard Lester decided to take.

After all these years, and all the superhero movies we’ve seen since, putting nostalgia aside, I still feel that Christopher Reeve puts in perhaps the best performance we’ve seen from a mortal man masquerading as a super one. He manages to be both graceful and strong as Superman, and whilst it’s not for everyone, I still absolutely love the knowing stupidity he portrays as Clarke Kent. Also worth mentioning is the strength of John Williams’ score – not just the superlative main theme, but the balance and changes in tone that he manages to reinforce from start to finish, whether it’s the majesty of Krypton, the touching theme for Jonathan Kent’s death and funeral, all the way to a simple theme which perfectly encapsulates Otis’ buffoonery. For my money it’s his best work.

Anyway, that’s enough of me wittering on about how much I love the movie (!) – here’s the artwork I created, which was projected before the event as the fans were taking their seats. The eagle-eyed amongst you (or should that be those with super vision) may notice that I reused my illustration of Marlon Brando holding an infant Superman aloft from my Mark Millar biography illustration. And why not. By the way, It looks like I’m going to continue collaborating with the Ritzy, so keep an eye out for future projects.

It was also very cool of the, er, guys at HeyUGuys to run a post on it, along with a little bit of background info about me, and for Hire an Illustrator to include it in their email newsletter this week. But even if you’re not a famous director or running an established movie blog and you simply hit the ‘Like’ button in Facebook or told someone about it, it was still very cool of you. Thanks!

You’ll also see some of the details, and the original (digital) pencil drawing. As ever, all of the drawing and painting was done in Painter, with the colours and effects adjusted and added in Photoshop. Enjoy!

Now if you’re familiar with my work then you’ll know that I tend to focus on the pop-cultural rather than the political (!), but Steve asked if I’d like to contribute to the publication, and I was happy to give it a shot. In my piece I wanted to broadly tackle a few issues, including the media’s focus on personality and soundbite rather than policy, the clear overlap of who stands for what exactly (thanks to the occasional inarticulacy of the candidates), and of course the resulting potential voter confusion/apathy that ensues. I thought it would be interesting to literally overlap the three main party leaders, and then combine that with a little satirical pun. You’ll find the result of my little experiment below. I’ll update with more news about the project as and when there’s something to report…

The first step is to work on the pencils. To get the proportions right I make a few marks over the top of the photo, but then I move that to the side and draw as much of the character by observation as possible. I tend to do two pencil layers, with the first incredibly loose, and the second fairly tight and precise so I don’t need to ‘think’ when doing the inks. In the images below I’ve overlaid the ink on top of the pencils to show the transition:

At this point, I bring all the separate files back to Photoshop and perfect the composition, cleaning up any gaps or glitches that catch my eye. Then it’s back to Painter, where I paint each separate area with a flat colour. This allows me to mask off each area when it comes to the actual painting stage, so that I can use large sweeping brush strokes whenever I need to, without overlapping any of the other areas. Painting the flat colours is tedious, but it frees everything up for the most exciting part, so it’s essential to take the time over it.

At this point the actual painting and shading can begin proper, and this all happens in Painter. Once that’s complete, it’s into Photoshop for the final time to adjust the colours and bring everything together, adding a few subtle effects here and there. Done!

I was very honoured to be asked to contribute to the project, and my limited edition signed prints are available right now! They’ve been printed as A3 posters, printed on lovely High White Smooth 315gsm 100% Cotton Rag, pH neutral, acid-free art paper, using 8-colour Epson UltraChrome K3 ink, and are just £20 each, with all proceeds going to Unicef. Thanks so much to the guys at Ripe Digital and Rik Penny for making this possible, and for their kind donation of time, expertise and materials.

Please support if you can. There are only twenty of these, and several have sold already, so what are you waiting for? Thanks in advance for your generosity.