Ormston was born in
Barnsley,
South Yorkshire, England and earned a degree in art and illustration at
Leeds University sometime around the mid-1980s. For the following few years he spent his time between playing the drums in various bands, some of which released singles and compilation album tracks (The Silent Scream, The second Coming, This Colossal Youth) and working part-time in a Sheffield comic-book shop with fellow budding artists Nick Percival, Greg Staples and filmmaker Lee Ford. Sometime in 1990 he moved into working full-time as an artist working mainly for
Judge Dredd Megazine. Ormston's dark, thick paints were seen in action on the
Judge Dredd strip on numerous occasions, most notably in the
Judgement Day and
Raptaur storylines. For the
Judge Dredd Megazine Ormston also created, with
Si Spencer, the comedy strip
Harke & Burr, a twist on the notorious grave robbers Burke and Hare. He drew part of "
The Kindly Ones" story arc in
Neil Gaiman's
The Sandman series. His work can also be seen in the
Predator comics for Dark Horse, Lucifer and Books of Magic for DC Vertigo. Ormston's prominent American comic credits include 'Bodies'for DC Vertigo which has been adapted for Netflix as an 8 part series starring Stephen Graham .
The Girl Who Would Be Death, many issues of
Lucifer, and primary artist on
Books of Magick: Life During Wartime, all published under the
Vertigo imprint of
DC Comics. His other works include a brief spell as character designer for Mainframe Animation where he co-created Dot's Bots with writer Steve Seagle, a proposed 13 episode series that so far has only made it to a 30-minute pilot episode. His Reboot Character design of Daemon can be seen in the TV movie
Daemon Rising made in 2001. Ormston is the artist and co-creator of
Black Hammer with writer
Jeff Lemire, colorist
Dave Stewart (artist), and letterer
Todd Klein. The series won the 2017
Eisner Award for Best New Series. ==Bibliography==