8 February 2010

This illustration for the latest Doctor Who Magazine Production Notes column was done in double quick time as the text was very late coming in. I had to keep it very simple so the issue wasn't late going to press!

6 January 2010

Happy New Year!

Here's my first Production Notes illustration for Steven Moffat's new Doctor Who (see the link at the top of this page for a bigger version).

11 December 2009

I must say a big thank you to Russell T Davies who has been writing the Production Notes column I illustrate for nearly six years now. His supportive and thoughtful emails to me over that time have been much appreciated. For someone who has a million and one things needing his attention to take time out to do that says a lot about him I think. I'll miss putting his words into pictures.

And of course thanks to him for bringing back the greatest TV programme in the world!

All the very best for your future Russell!

10 December 2009

It's been a busy six weeks for me, working on some stuff I can't show you just now. But among the stuff I can show you is the illustration for Russell T Davies' final Production Notes column in Doctor Who Magazine. It's not the end of my association with it though and I've just completed work on Steven Moffat's inaugural Production Notes for the New Year.

Before that I was working on a festive e-card for John Menzies. For larger versions of both please follow the links to my work portfolios above.

And finally, last week's Doctor Who Adventures included a free gift of fridge magnets of my illustrations. Unfortunately I can't use mine as my fridge has a wooden door!

10 November 2009

My final DWA Survival Guide (for the time being) is in the current issue, together with puffy stickers of the Planet of the Dead icons I designed last spring.

10 November 2009

I made a mistake in my last blog.. That wasn't the penultimate column for DWM by RTD. However this one is, his 75th Production Notes.

A tribute to the great BBC director, Barry Letts, who cast Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor and who died recently, I chose a slightly different illustrative style from my norm to create the background of the image. I was inspired by the amazing murals by artist Jon Burgerman and felt that such a style would enable me to combine all the different elements of Barry's time on Doctor Who but also his passion for the environment and Buddhism.

The full illustration can be seen in my Doctor Who gallery.

14 October 2009

The penultimate Doctor Who Magazine Production Notes column for Russell T Davies, as he nears the end of his connection with the series.

This month he is talking about how he and his colleague Phil had been reminiscing about a 1982 BBC1 repeat season. A simple rectangular montage of different elements from this season could have been dull. So I tried to liven things up by playing with the overall shape of the image, breaking out of the dimensions that usually confine me on the Production Notes page. I'm a great admirer of the influential designer from the 50s and 60s, Paul Rand. The transparent shapes laid over the drawings of Russell and Phil are inspired by a book jacket Rand designed, and hopefully add a bit of interest.

See my Doctor Who gallery for a full version of the illustration.

5 October 2009

My double page K9-shaped maze is in the current Doctor Who Adventures (issue 135, pages 18-19). See how quickly you find your way through him!

I've uploaded my design to my Doctor Who gallery.

28 September 2009

Last week's Doctor Who Adventures featured the penultimate Survival Guide, how to survive an attack by a Pyrovile, illustrated by me (see my Doctor Who gallery). The same issue had a free gift of a sheet of stickers of my character icons.

Next week's edition features my double page maze in the shape of K9.

28 September 2009

I've also just completed the route map for the Sussex Beacon Brighton Half-Marathon 2010, and have uploaded it to my Work gallery.

15 September 2009

Only three more Production Notes by Russell T Davies after this one here before the end of an era...

The theme this month is ComicCon in San Diego, where the weird and wonderful fans dressed up in all manner of costumes and gave David Tennant a rapturous welcome. To help me depict some fans I asked some actual fans to pose for me, friends of mine who I am sure would wish me to stress that they have never dressed up in costume and behaved so eccentrically!

Early one Sunday morning during the Edinburgh Festival before we all traipsed off to see Katy Manning's one-woman play, I plied them with croissants in return for their madness. No Scooby costume was present, but we did have a Cyberman helmet! Sometimes I find it helpful to ask people to pose for me. My godson's family, for instance, were invaluable during my recent Survival Guide work for Doctor Who Adventures. See my Doctor Who gallery for a full version of the illustration..

I've just finished work on a K9-shaped maze for DWA's centrespread which will be out in a couple of weeks. And I'm just about to start work on the next Production Notes, the 74th would you believe! Two more to go...

24 August 2009

In the current issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Russell T Davies discusses his move to America and how, in the trailers for Doctor Who and Torchwood there, his and Steven Moffat's talking heads are intercut with the action. He then suggests that they are put into the BBC1 idents, so I took that as my inspiration for the accompanying illustration.

This was quite a complicated one, involving probably the most opacity masks I have ever used in an illustration. An opacity mask is used to fade an object from solid to transparent (used here on my drawings of Russell, the parrot, the crab, the ice cream, the background signs etc). I also used a lot of glow effects to give the impression of neon lights.

After I'd sourced as many reference screengrabs as possible of the Neon Woman and her entourage, I drew Steven and Russell in hand with brush and black ink. Then I scanned them in, neatened them up and coloured them in Illustrator.

I normally tackle the tricky parts first - all the main characters in an illustration (as faces are time consuming). But as all the different elements needed made it daunting to begin, I thought I'd attempt the easiest part (the background) first!

As DWM prefers all its illustrations as Photoshop files, the final job to do when nearing completion was to export the image to Photoshop. Here I cropped the edges and assigned a colour profile to the illustration.

While working on this I had a really nice email from Russell about the previous issue's illo - so that made this illustration particularly enjoyable to work on!

I've uploaded the image to my Doctor Who gallery.

3 August 2009

For the latest DWM Production Notes illustration (for issue 411 out now, see right) the theme of Russell's column was the ins and outs of Radio Times billing for the new series. So I took as my starting point the incredible RT art Frank Bellamy created for the Jon Pertwee/ Tom Baker series in the 1970s and imagined how the current version of the show might have been covered 35 years ago.

There were two separate tasks in producing my illustration. Firstly, in order to make it look like they were real clippings from old Radio Times I typeset each billing in Illustrator CS4, then printed and cut them out. I then photographed them on a table with an anglepoise lamp casting sharp shadows over the pieces of paper. Then I took that photo into Illustrator to use as a template so I could get realistic colour blends and shadows in my illustration.

Once that was done I turned to the black and white character illustrations which I drew by hand in pencil. A couple of these had already been half-drawn, but ultimately never used, for a Production Notes column two years ago. These pencil drawings were scanned in to my Mac, then subjected to much tidying and sharpening up in Illustrator. I'm quite meticulous when it comes to lines, and like them to be smooth and tidy even if a lot of the detail might be lost in the final printed item.

Once I was happy with the characters (I particularly enjoyed drawing Baines with his flaring Kenneth Williams nostrils!) I laid them over my already completed illustration of the clippings and gave a slightly yellowish tint to all the blacks and also set their transparency to 70%. This made them blend in with the creamy yellowy browns they were being laid over.

I've uploaded a hi-res large version to my Doctor Who gallery.