Writers James Tynion IV and Noah J. Yuenkel have teamed with artist Matt Fox for UFOlogy, a six-issue miniseries debuting April 1 from BOOM! Studios. Set in the Midwest, the story centers on two teens, Becky and Malcolm, who uncover a mystery involving aliens that somehow traumatized both of their parents more than a decade ago. To mark the launch of this new series, BOOM! Studios asked artist Alison Sampson to create a Jackpot Variant, which will only be one for every 100 copies of Fox's main cover.

Sampson shared with ROBOT 6 the creative process behind her cover:

"The editors at BOOM! Studios invited me to make one of the covers for their new series by James Tynion IV, Noah J. Yuenkel and Matt Fox, UFOlogy. They asked for three or four cover roughs and I submitted four. I had Noah and James' pitch to work with and the penciled character designs from Matt. BOOM! Studios chose option 4, the one with the most possibilities, and my favorite too. Had I had to submit more roughs, they would all have been of our heroine on her bike."



"The option needed to be slightly different -- I couldn't have the reflected circle of of light from the fire reflected in the lake (for editorial reasons), and had to tweak that element of the design."



"The story for UFOlogy is strongly rooted in a place (Minnesota in the pitch), so I had a house on an island on  a lake in a wood. I'd done quite a bit of research for the roughs (there's a Minnesota landmark, the Morton Sphere, on the left, there), but in the end, I ending up drawing on my own childhood experience and adding atmosphere. To replace the strong symmetry of the proposal, I made the image more asymmetric.and tried to indicate some tension in the lines."



"Because I was to color this work, I didn't ink the entirety of the pencils as I'd pick up on some of that other definition digitally in the coloring process. This allowed me to keep an otherwise increasingly complex image with an unfamiliar location, low light, reflections, top, bottom, fore, middle and background, and a bunch of alien effects, organized."





"Having spent some time on a colored rough, I wanted to develop that. The editorial guideline not to fully light the bottom of the page also had an effect on the coloring, as the dramatic effect of the reflection had to be achieved in some other way and the bottom of the page would have to be darker, at least in part. The text was intended to lay across the center of the image, dividing near and far, and I handed the colored final art in with guidelines as to that."



"BOOM! Studios have chosen this cover to be their Jackpot variant for April, which means it will be relatively scarce. I really like Matt Fox's art (I remember him as part of Wet Black Ghost) and can't wait to read how this story unfolds. It was great having a look in on the process right at the start. Thanks to Eric Harburn, the UFOlogy team and BOOM! Studios for having me."