Robby The Robot by Ian Gibson.

Ian Gibson produced the first comic work that I ever read that had me wishing my life away. How long would I have to wait for the next issue of 2000AD and my next fix of Halo Jones ? Together with Alan Moore he made me realise that I was going to be into comics for a very long time.
I love the way Ian portrays women in comics, the strong characters but with very feminine physiques and without making them too top heavy (if you know what I mean).
When I came to ask Ian to do a Robot commission, it had to be something that had a female in it. I was torn between two ideas, Miranda and Robby the Robot on planet Altair-4, from Forbidden Planet or Robot Maria from Metropolis. In the end I went for both, but here's the first, Miranda and Robby.
Ian was an easy person to deal with and seemed genuinely interested, and set off to work his magic. A month or so passed and I'd heard nothing from Ian so I dropped him an email. Just a little friendly questioning type of thing. Ian was of course busy, as he should be, but was also having a few problems getting the thing to work right.
He was playing with the image whilst doing his other work, but informed me that it hadn't come together yet, or at least he wasn't happy with how it had come together so far.
After the commission had been completed I asked Ian if I could have the preparatory sketches, just so that I could see how the final image come to be. Here are a selection of the pages he sent me for you to look at...



I think Ian pretty quickly settled on Robby's look ...

I love the curves that make up Robby's body. Showing similarities to the Robby of the movie, and yet very different. Movie Robby had a problem walking, whereas Ian's version looks perfectly able to nip in front of Miranda and protect her from the soldiers sent to investigate her father's activities.

Once happy with Robby, Ian then works on Miranda...

working on the dynamics of the composition.

and the background, capturing the strange sky that instantly places the scene on a distant planet...

and then tightening up the characters...

until finally it all comes together, with the eye flowing from Miranda's outstretched had to that plaved on Robby's chest and across to Robby's own hand, as she hold him back from being perhaps a little over protective.

Using purple as the predominant colour is a great way to add to the feel of it all taking place on a different planet, and not our grey moon, and this is nicely offset by Miranda's green body suit.
What a fabulous image, and what a privilege to be able to leaf through all the preparatory sketches.
I'll leave you then with one last look at what might have been...

Ha ... humourous Robby ... great stuff.