We checked out gruesome fan art and real-life zombies at The Walking Dead: Art Apocalypse – and spoke with the artist whose winning entry graced a recent Times Out cover.

Long-shuffling zombie show The Walking Dead has returned from the grave on British screens for a new series, and a pop-up gallery over the weekend saw the show returning to its art roots.

Originally based on a comic by Robert Kirkman with the famous pencil work of Charlie Adlard, the show has now returned for the second half of its ninth series, an event celebrated by The Walking Dead: Art Apocalypse, which came out of nowhere in London over the weekend.

The gallery and immersive experience saw not only real-life zombies fighting over your guts and a chance to zombify yourself in the make-up chair, but was packed out with finalists of a fan art competition with excellent visuals that wouldn’t look out of place as future covers for the ongoing comics series.

Included on the walls was Adam Cockerton‘s overall winning piece below based on biker survivor Daryl Dixon, which was chosen to grace the cover of a recent Times Out promotional cover in support of the event.

Adam is a freelance art director and designer living in London who’s been designing for over 15 years.

“For the last 10 years I’ve mostly had entertainment clients which is where I’ve developed my passion for poster art,” he tells Digital Arts.

“I was in-house at a major film studio for five years and we worked broadly on movie campaigns and licensing partnerships, most recently Kong: Skull Island which I did the title treatment for, plus Godzilla and Warcraft among others.”

“The illustration thing is fairly new though,” Adam continues. “It’s my side hustle, it’s what I do to satisfy my creative needs. I’m self taught and working things out as I go; I still feel I’m developing my style and trying out new techniques.”

Adam revealed to us that his piece came out of his long-running love for the series.

“I’m a fan of the show and had the idea of the piece beforehand, I thought it would make a great character poster,” he reveals. “I made it especially for the Fox initiative and was surprised to have been the overall winner considering how many amazing entries there were.

“The Art Apocalypse itself was awesome, interactive and totally immersive. So cool that there was Daryl’s actual bike there on display.” Adam definitely had fun on that bike, by the looks of it.

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