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Big Finish
The Pandorica Opens
Time Travellers
The Daleks
The Specials
The David Tennant Collection
The Lazarus Experiment
Rise of the Cybermen
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Kingdom of Silver
The Cybermen Collection
Dalek
The Christmas Invasion
Radio Times
The Condemned
Return to the Web Planet
The Girl Who Never Was
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The Tardis
The Stolen Earth
The Silurians
The Doctor & Rose
Rose
The Eighth Doctor
The Sontarans & Adipose
Silurian Hibernation
Big Finish
Created to accompany an article on Big Finish productions in Doctor Who Magazine, a celebration of its past and it’s future. My brief required me to come up with something in a fairly short timeframe, but the key was to use Tom Baker as the dominant part of the illustration because of his new ties to Big Finish. So I divided up the page into sections using crackles and cropped in various featured Doctors from the Big Finish universe. The TARDIS was added last to split the illustration down the middle and create a dramatic effect. For quickness I carried the colour palette over from The David Tennant collection piece.
The Pandorica Opens
This illustration was first conceived for the Series 5 Dvd boxset, initially to sit on the inside of the packaging, but ultimately being on the inside flap for the regular edition and as a small artcard for the tin edition.
As this was Matt’s first season it was a simple idea of featuring the endgame of the main episode, The Pandorica and Amy. Matt was polished off with his sonic screwdriver, influenced by Pertwee from The Sea Devils and Carnival of Monsters.
The Daleks were added in later to finish off the composition. The final artwork remained unchanged from the original sketch.
Time Travellers
Originally I had an idea to choose several episodes and to design an artcard for each one.
It was decided though to use the cards for standalone characters, and so I sketched up several ideas, one featuring the new Doctor and Amy, one of the TARDIS and one Dalek. River was considered at one point. You can see from the original sketch that I was unhappy with The Doctor’s pose and so changed it to a much more action orientated look. The background capped off the look, using a Target book pastiche space scene.
The Daleks
This is the Dalek version of the artcard included in the Series 5 DVD Boxset.
The original sketch depicted the Dalek looking upwards but this was changed at a later date. We played around with differing colours for the Dalek, eventually settling on orange, which is the colour for a Scientist Dalek. Also include here is a yellow version which came a close second and represents an Eternal Dalek.
The Specials
Part of the Specials boxset detailing the end to David Tennants tenure.
As this was the conclusion to David Tennant’s Doctor, the idea here simply was to split the background into four quadrants, one for each episode, and then to fill those quadrants with a main villain and maybe some background work. The Doctor had to sit flush in front, so I positioned him cutting into the panels and the panels themselves cutting into each other. The panels are Cybermen from ‘The Next Doctor’, The Master from ‘The End of Time’, The flying Swarm from ‘Planet of the Dead’ and the water menace from ‘Waters of Mars’.
The David Tennant Collection
Created as a celebration of David Tennant’s tenure as The Doctor and especially formatted for the lovely packaging of his complete works.
This art carries all of his main companions, some of his main enemies and introduces a slight affectionate nod in the direction of Frank Bellamy. The visual was pulled together with interlinking and intersecting circles and Gallifreyan symbolism touched off with a small colour palette to keep things simple.
The Lazarus Experiment
This was the first piece of professional art that I produced for Doctor Who Magazine.
It was such a thrill to be asked by the then DWM editor Clayton Hickman, to come up with a concept for a double page spread for a feature on ‘The Lazarus Experiment’. Because of the genesis of the story being from Marvel Comics, Clayton wanted a Marvel feel to illustration. So the idea here was to have young Prof Lazarus on one end of the page and the old one on the other, in between the machine and the bubbly fizz made out the shape of the monster Lazarus becomes which connects the two heads. The Doctor and Martha were added in last to complete the piece.
Rise of the Cybermen
This was a standalone piece I did in my spare time, but actually helped in getting my artwork noticed.
I simply set myself a brief once the new Cybermen were revealed. I was fortunate enough to obtain a few basic Cyber renders to work from, as material on the new Cybermen was extremely rare back then. The art was meant to run like a one page panel, such as might be found in the old Radio Times in the 1970′s with the added in speech bubble and panel zig-zag borders and comic book sounds of the ‘KLANG’ for the Cyber feet. David Tennant was so new as The Doctor when I did this that there was only one press photo from the Christmas Invasion about for reference. Still stands up well as a five year old piece of work.
Kingdom of Silver
I was extremely excited to get the chance to illustrate this Big Finish story for DWM because it featured second Doctor era Cybermen!
There is something special about that design for the Cybermen, something timeless and classic, you could pair them with any Doctor and they would not look out of place. I got the fantastic assistance of Gavin Rymill for this, he has great renders of this style of Cyberman, so he was able to manipulate the Cybermen to my sketch and directions. For the Cyber Controller, i worked from the Controller featured in ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ but edited the final look to fit in with the right era. This is probably one of my favourite pieces of art. The Big Finish story that accompanied it was very good also. Win win!
The Cybermen Collection
This was one of those rare occasions where the composition and layout was already pre planned for me.
With some tweaking we came up with the desired result. We used David Tennant from Rise of the Cybermen and Rose from Doomsday. The Cyberman with electric hands and TARDIS completed the illustration and the fizz and bolts where used to tie the whole thing together.
Dalek
Dalek was created around the same time as the Rise of the Cybermen piece, there was more information available though which made the artwork easier to conceptualize.
As you can see the driving force of this was the old Frank Bellamy Radio Times cover. I thought it would be fun to try it at the time and i think it worked out ok. This was just done for fun but i would have loved it to be on the actual cover!
The Christmas Invasion
Initially this was brief given to me for the Series 2 Boxset.
I was asked to come up with a shortened version of the Christmas Invasion introduction of David Tennant as the new Doctor, in a comic style, that was to be used as an introduction to the booklet that came with the set. It was drawn up and finished using lots of still grabs from the episode as reference.
Unfortunately the idea was rejected in the end, for a simpler approach. This led to The Doctor and Rose illustration, which was used with Russell T Davies introductory notes in the booklet.
Radio Times
This was a commission for the Christmas 2009 edition of Radio Times.
The illustration was only small, to accompany a radio listing. I was to depict David Tennant’s Doctor and Russell T Davies for a radio programme where both David Tennant and Russell T Davies talked about their time together on Doctor Who, with the show coming to an end for them both.
The idea for this was simple, the idea to have them angled, one top left and one bottom right with some crackles and fizz going between. I went for David being The Doctor over a candid shot because i thought the content of the programme demanded it.
The Condemned
This is the preview art for Big Finishes ‘The Condemned’ starring Colin Baker.
This follows on from ‘The Girl Who Never Was’ and was a half page illustration. This was one of two concepts submitted to DWM, this was the enclosed, framed version, that split the action in two and used a primary red for danger and the block of flats that the story took place in, and the blue of the interior with TARDIS and Charley. The Sixth Doctor completes the illustration, big and bold, using negative white space for his hair that gives the art good balance.
Return to the Web Planet
Return to the Web Planet was an absolute joy to do. Barnaby Edwards approached me, specifically because they wanted it to act as the sequel to The Web Planet that starred William Hartnell in the 60′s.
They wanted it to be a complete pastiche from the Chris Achiellos original, so i set about trying to recapture that feel. The major difficulty i found was the composition. Due to the left hand band that carried the title down the right taking up a third of the cover, it became tricky to compose. Fortunately the art had just the right amount of elements to be successful, by combining space into Nyssa’s hair and sandwiching the Menoptera between The Doctor and his companion i was able to get in the elements i needed and save space.
The Girl Who Never Was
This was the first joint commission from both Doctor Who Magazine and Big Finish. It was published in Doctor Who Magazine 390 as a full page advertisement.
The idea was to make the page almost like a comic panel and featured two time zones, both featuring Charley (India Fisher) on a ship. It was particularly tough coming up with a concept that fitted in all the elements needed, Cybermen, young and old Charley, two time zones and Japanese fighter planes. The ship also had to show age on one side.
The colours helped to achieve the split look, with a stormy greenish hue for the younger Charley and a calmer sunset backdrop for the older Charley. Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor capped off the piece.
The Tardis
This is the third of three artcards packaged with the Series 5 Boxset.
It reuses the background from the other two to keep them part of the set, depicts the new Matt Smith TARDIS and has crackling energy surrounding it.
The Stolen Earth
This was part of a two illustration offering in the Series 4 Dvd Boxset featuring David Tennant and Catherine Tate.
I wanted to capture the excitement of the last two episodes, ‘The Stolen Earth’ and ‘Journey’s End’. Working with Stuart Crouch i devised a way of fitting in The Daleks, Davros, The Emperor Dalek, Saucers, The Doctor and Donna Noble. Donna was particularly tricky because of the deliberate black and white style i use for main characters. Because she famously has ginger coloured hair she looked grey when created in black and white. So i used a red to give her a striking appearance, using red tones from the same colour for the shading. I used concentric rings behind the characters to depict movement and added the characters in such a way as they appear to emanate outward.
The Silurians
This was one of two illustrations produced for The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who.
I generally wanted to convey a feel of old school annuals from the seventies with a hint of Target novel, so this artwork, which showed a generic overview of the characters featured in the story – had deliberate over saturation of colours, very bright reds and greens almost as if it was printed very cheaply! This accompanied the story by David Llewellyn called ‘The Little Planet’.
The Doctor & Rose
This was the second idea put forward for the Series 2 Boxset.
The original version was a small comic strip, but it was decided that something simpler was needed. The whole idea came about because we wanted to introduce some artwork into the photo heavy sets, just to break things up a little and offer some variety. This was a straight portrait of The Doctor and Rose with some Target inspired colouring, concentric circles and space bubbles.
Rose
This illustration is the piece of artwork that started me along the path, eventually leading to commissions and Whopixels.
My original idea was to recapture the retro feel of the old Doctor Who illustrations i grew up with from the seventies, from past masters like Chris Achiellos and Frank Bellamy, but create them with a modern twist using the new series as a focal point. It was also an exercise in getting the newer generation of Doctor Who fan interested in this style, that would hopefully encourage them to explore the classic series of Doctor Who as well as the new. I chose Rose because i love the Autons and the whole setup lent itself well to the Achiellos style.
The Eighth Doctor
From DWM 401 accompanying the article Reactive-8 about the Eighth Doctors adventures on BBC7.
The BBC7 season of McGann’s Eighth Doctor had to capture the season as a whole. So i basically created a montage of enemies with the two main actors. We have the Sobek Crocs, Autons and Zygons, as well as the TARDIS. It was good to illustrate Sheridan Smith as she is someone you would not normally come across when working on Who art.
The Sontarans & Adipose
This was part of a two art set in the booklet for the complete Series 4 DVD Boxset.
Because the first part contained The DOctor, Donna, Daleks, Emperor Dalek and Davros, we decided to concentrate on the other main villains of that season, The Sontarans. After sketching those in place, i decided to put in The Adipose, almost a complete contrast to the serious Sontarans! Sontaran ships and fumes complete the drawing.
Silurian Hibernation
From ‘The Little Planet’ story from The Brilliant Book, this tiny illustration has more narrative than it’s older cousin.
From the original concept this illustration was to remain complete black and white with no tonal values. It depicts the young Silurian girl looking at the viewer, with half the illustration slashed showing the impeding hibernation of the Silurians under ground. The dribbles coming from the moon in the top right represent the dream state of the girl as she begins to leave the world she knows behind.