David Messina's Countdown cover designs, and something new soon!

A few days ago I came across an interview with David Messina on TrekZone.de, which talks about all his Star Trek work, and his other projects, and why he's taking a break from Trek for a while:

It's been almost three years of full-time work on Star Trek It seemed the right time for me to do something else. I think with the trilogy of the movie adaptation, Nero, and Countdown, I have said everything there's to say about this universe of Star Trek. I felt the need to do something else because, apart from Spock, I had been working only on the new timeline for almost a whole year. I really felt exhausted because I put all my energy into this work. I have drawn Nero, just like Countdown, almost completely by myself. I also did the colors for some pages because I had a strong idea of how the work should appear. For Spock, I did the pencil and the covers and I did a lot of work in order to link it to Countdown.

I felt the need to move on, to find something else and draw new energy from that. Maybe I will be back with a project that is related to the next movie, but it's still far too early to think about that.

What really caught my eye though were the illustrations that accompanied the interview. There were several development sketches for various Star Trek comics, including these concepts for covers for the Countdown series:

 

 

 

I asked David Messina about these and this is what he told me:

The people from Bad Robots asked me to think about something that could become a poster if put together and these was my proposal! I was trying to focus the cover on the story more than the characters, but after I changed my idea and I focused more on the characters himself, since Star Trek is (in my humble opinion) more about the people than the future itself!

David Messina is dipping his toes back into Star Trek this week with one of the covers for the first issue of IDW's new ongoing series. But he also gave me a tiny hint of something else in the works:

I can't tell you much at the moment, but yes, I'll back soon (more or less) on something really BIG!

Exciting! Check out the Trekzone interview for more on David Messina and more of his artwork. Or have a look at his blog.