Classic Doctor Who Film Posters

Here's a final selection of Doctor Who cinema posters created during lockdown. No logic to the choice of titles. I just had an idea and went with it. 

Particularly pleased with the one for The Daleks - so pleased I used Japanese text on it. The upper line is the title of the series - taken from the official logo - whilst the lower line is the title taken from the Japanese printing of the novelisation which is loosely translated as "Space-Time great Blood War" or something like that.

If you want to show your appreciation of my work, you can buy me a coffee via my Ko-fi account. The link is here.

Three Blu-ray Collector's Edition Things...

I had to leave this post for a few days whilst I did another cover. I like things in threes - so I needed a further cover to add to the two I had planned for this post.

But what to do? 

I seem to have done everything I wanted to do with these designs. Then I thought, how about a steelbook Blu-ray for something that is missing from the archives that isn't Doctor Who? So I set to work on creating a quick and dirty design for Nigel Kneale's long lost teleplay The Creature from 1955. It tends to get forgotten about what with being surrounded by Quatermass serials and Nineteen Eighty-four. But it did have the honour of a Hammer movie version (which is actually superior and better known that that awful film of Nineteen Eighty-four starring Edmond O'Brien.).

I might do a steelbook cover for Nigel Kneale's Nineteen Eighty-four at some point. Though I'd better hurry as 2021 marks the year that Orwell's works enter the public domain and we stand a chance of having the play finally released on DVD/Blu-ray. 



Anyhow, here's some Blu-ray covers what I did over the course of a few weeks. 

If you've enjoyed this post (and given the fact that you've got this far suggests you have), then feel free to buy me a coffee as I'm a bit thirsty for one. You can do this via my Ko-fi account. The link is here.

Doctor Who Lockdown cinema posters

It all started when the lovely Emily Cook ( @Emily_Rosina ) sent out a tweet suggesting that, under lockdown conditions, wouldn't it be lovely to have a nationwide tweet-a-long to the first episode of Doctor Who (2005) 'Rose' on its fifteenth anniversary. By all accounts the suggestion snowballed into a worldwide trending event for which Russell T Davies himself appeared on Twitter to join in and even supplied a new ending for the episode. 

The tweet-a-longs are now a regular event. Loads of creatives join in with the fun along with many of the cast, writers and producers. 

I did my bit and added a few retro cinema posters to the melee. A few. I say "a few". I've now done ten - one for each episode. I even threw in a few classic series stories too.

Each of these posters is (sometimes loosely) based on ones for old feature films. I'll tell you which at the bottom of this post but in the meantime, see if you can spot them. Some are pretty obscure... 

The designs are based on the following feature film posters:

Dalek - Kronos (1957)

The Eleventh Hour - The Blue Bird (1940)

The Girl in the Fireplace - The Virgin Queen (1955)

Human Nature/The Family of Blood - Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Heaven Sent - Death in Venice (1971)

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Planet of the Spiders - Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Remembrance of the Daleks - Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (1960)

Rose - Invaders from Mars (1953)

The Stolen Earth/Journey's End - War of the Worlds (1953)

If you've enjoyed these posters, then you can show your appreciation to the artist by buying him a cup of coffee via his Ko-fi account by clicking here. He really does appreciate it and needs constant coffee to keep him awake to produce this tat.

Birdbox Streaming

Streaming services are ten-a-penny these days. Amazon Prime, Netflix, DisneyPlus, etc... are a great diversion in these times of social isolation. But no doubt, the intensity with which folk are using them will result in a lot of us realising there's actually not much of true interest on these sites - a handful of premiere TV shows, some blockbuster movies you've seen at the cinema already and a selection of really obscure items that you only find by accident due to the nature of the site's bizarre interpretation of your viewing habits. 

Britbox launched last year and on Boxing Day gave access to every available classic Doctor Who episode ever (except for the ones it didn't). Britbox is a UK initiative created by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to provide access to their back catalogues in lieu of the US-based streaming services who tend to promote their own material. Admittedly, the Doctor Who material is the only true archive material on the site at the moment - it's mostly recent stuff of the likes that digital channels like GOLD, ITV3, More4, etc... already screen ad nauseum. But we are promised more as the service become established. For archive material, you can do no worse than seek out the "From The Archives" section on the BBC iPlayer. It features a variety of elderly BBC programmes including episodes of Panorama, Man Alive, a handful of black and white dramas, odd episodes of Bob's Full House and Big Break together with Quatermass and the Pit - complete and fully restored. 

With that all in mind, I started thinking about a streaming service myself. I called it Birdbox (see what I did there?). And begin tweeting highlights of its odd programming in a similar vein to how DisneyPlus promoted its content on Twitter. 

Here are those said highlights... (Click images to enlarge)

You can't subscribe to Birdbox (thankfully given some of its content) but you can buy me a coffee via my Ko-fi account - just to show how much you enjoyed reading this post. If you didn't, try another post (although knowing you, you probably won't find that one funny either...) 

Supermarionation Movie Blockbusters!

The wonderful Talking Pictures TV channel recently broadcast 'Captain Scarlett' here in the UK. I didn't watch it. It's not my cup of tea. 


"Why?" I hear you ask. "It's the popular Gerry and Sylvia Anderson supermarionation TV series from the sixties featuring an indestructible secret agent and his battles against intangible slow speaking aliens from Mars."

"Ah, but it isn't." I say (somewhat smugly). "Take a note of the extra 't' at the end of 'Scarlett'. This is in fact the 1953 movie 'Captain Scarlett' - a period adventure film that starred Richard Greene - TV's Robin Hood - as a Napoleonic swashbuckler who attempts to save a Princess from a dodgy marriage. So not really my cup of tea in any world even though it was shot in Technicolor in Mexico and was Brazillian actress Leonora Amar's final film." (You can tell I've looked it up on Wikipedia, can't you!) 

I thought it would be a tremendous wheeze to create a cinema poster for the indestructable Captain Scarlet based on the original one for 'Captain Scarlett'. So I did.

And as usual, I got carried away. I also did ones for 'Stingray' (Based on the poster for 'War Gods of the Deep' (1965) aka. 'City Under The Sea', 'Fireball XL5' (Based on the poster for 'Rocketship XM' (1950) and er... 'Timeslip' (Based on the poster for er... 'Time Slip' (1950) a movie that shares the same name as the eponymous children's TV serial from 1970.)  

If you've enjoyed these efforts, why not buy me a coffee via my Ko-fi account to show your appreciation. Even if you don't, the link will also take you to a Gallery featuring what I consider my finest pieces of work. Both of them. Thank you.