Nigel Dobbyn
Dobbyn's drawing style is distinctive despite often working with Licensed characters and therefore having to stick to certain guidelines. Some work which I think best shows some of his prowess is the Knuckles strips he did for Egmont Fleetway's Sonic the comic, as well as his work on 2000AD because his work with more traditional media has a very good attention to detail not just in the characters but also in the backgrounds as he has often exploited interesting brush techniques such as very watery brushes to let the color diffuse together to create very dirty, rusted robots. Or flicking white paint onto a background to create stars for a space scene.
Skilled in traditional illustrative work, Dobbyn has also adapted readily to digital methods of creating comics and illustrations. While he still uses paper and pencil, he has taken to using Adobe Illustrator to digitally 'ink' his drawings, giving them a very clean and crisp look thanks to the vector file format of Illustrator. After masking any mistakes, he then imports the graphic into Adobe Photoshop for colouring, where he usually uses Gradient tools to create shade and tone.
The result is a very clean looking illustration well suited to reproduction, however it still retains Dobbyn's drawing style because the underlying image was originally hand drawn. His work in Illustrator is also so detailed that it gives the impression it was inked by hand. His use of custom brushes create a look more like Photoshop inking, however the vector file format of Illus
Author's Comment: I have worked professionally as an illustrator since 1988, when I started producing comic strips for the science fiction adventure comic 2000AD.
Eight years work for 2000AD was followed by several years working on Sonic the Comic, producing comic strips based on Sonic the Hedgehog and related characters. This gave me great experience in working with licensed characters.
I have since gone on to work on licensed characters as diverse as Digimon, Angelina Ballerina, Mr. Bean, My Little Pony and the Power Rangers.
I have produced illustrations in a range of different styles for clients such as Redan, Egmont, Panini, Dark Horse Comics, D. C. Comics, Reader’s Digest, Eagle Star, Haymarket Conferencing, local councils and wildlife organisations and private commissions.
My illustration work encompasses both traditional and digital elements, as well as digital design.
Nationality: British