Topps 2017 AMC The Walking Dead Season 6 Sketch Cards
For the first time I had the opportunity to work on AMC’s The Walking Dead property by creating original sketch cards for Topps’ The Walking Dead Season 6 trading cards. I did a relatively small number of sketch cards for this project, with the subject matter being a mix of walkers (zombies) and main cast members from the TV show. Each illustration of an actor was approved by that actor themself, which I always think is pretty cool when I see that they personally approved a drawing I did of them.
I’m also a Fan of the Show!
I’ve been a big fan of the Walking Dead ever since it first came on TV. Back in 2010 I was at San Diego Comic Con with my wife, where we saw posters and whatnot for the upcoming Walking Dead TV show. At the time neither one of us were familiar with the comic book so the TV show meant little to us. Looking back on it, this was a bit of a missed opportunity to see the show’s panel or potentially meet some of the cast!
Right around Halloween of that year I saw TV previews for the Walking Dead and thought it looked pretty good. My wife had to work the night it premiered but the day after I couldn’t stop telling her how good the first episode was. By the next week she was watching the second episode with me and was as deeply hooked on it as I was.
To this day, Sunday nights during the fall and winter months are date nights. My wife and I curl up on the couch, becoming transfixed on watching the Walking Dead followed by the Talking Dead. We’ve loved the show from the start and it’s not the ‘zombies’ that draw us in on a weekly basis, although they are quite entertaining in their own right. Instead, it’s the characters that make us love the show. We love how the show is about people facing extraordinary circumstances. Each character has a full arc, with dynamic changes occurring through their stories.
Artwork I Created for the Set
This was the first project I used oil based pencil crayons on. Previously I had lightly dabbled in them, but for roughly 1/4 of this set I went all out. For all of the walkers I inked them with my trusty Japanese brush pen and then coloured them with Copic markers and used a white gel pen and pencil crayons for highlights or backgrounds. For the portraits I sparingly used the brush pen again or not at all. Then I used copics to create a base layer of colour and then pencil crayons for highlights and on some, like especially the Negan and Glen pictured above, I used an extensive amount of pencil crayon. I repeated this approach in the Star Wars: 40th Anniversary set which was released last month but was actually created after my work on the Walking Dead set.
For this Walking Dead product, which is the first Topps Walking Dead product to include sketch cards, I was allocated five artist proofs for sale. All five of these have been sold but you can still commission me to create an illustration of your favourite Walking Dead character or walker; just not on a Topps card. Despite all of my artist proofs being sold, I will be posting some examples of sketch cards I did for the set that can be found in the product itself. Look for those being posted on my social media channels like Twitter & Instagram!
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