Jodie Whittaker on Old Doctor Who annuals

Well, the new trailer for the Doctor Who new series has debuted at SDCC and on line... and well, it looks good doesn't it? 

Fired by the freshness and enthusiasm of the thirty second clip show, I've gone back and re-purposed some of the old familiar Doctor Who annuals of old. (including the 1978 one which I've struggled with over the years, trying to find some way of doing it justice.) All this despite the fact there's still only around six or seven official pictures of Jodie Whittaker and the cast to play around with...

I hope you like them. 

If you liked this post (or indeed, any of the 400 odd others I've done over the years), why not buy me a coffee at my Ko-fi profile. The link is here.

The Tom Baker Years - Classic Doctor Who novels rebranded...

This is some more housekeeping. Regular visitors to this blog will know that I've now produced new retro-style book covers for all of Tom Baker's Doctor Who adventures. 

As is my want, I've not put them on the site in chronological order for the simple reason I did not create them in an specific order.

This post contains links to all of the seasons... in their proper order!!!

Season twelve - Robot to Revenge of the Cybermen

Season thirteen - Terror of the Zygons to The Seeds of Doom

Season fourteen - The Masque of Mandragora to The Talons of Weng Chiang

Season fifteen - The Horror of Fang Rock to The Invasion of Time

Season sixteen - The Ribos Operation to The Armageddon Factor

Season seventeen - Destiny of the Daleks to The Horns of Nimon

Season eighteen - The Leisure Hive to Logopolis

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season fifteen

Graham Williams takes over as the new producer of Doctor Who but the covers remain the same... 

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season thirteen

I had hoped to take a break from doing these. They were something to do in the downtime over the holiday period. However...

I caught a glimpse of the anti-matter monster from Planet of Evil online. It's the pic of the studio costume BEFORE it was fed into the Top of the Pops video effect filter and was sent to menace Tom Baker in the final production. The creature appears to be made from a grey silk-like material in actuality. I thought I'd have a go at trying to re-create the final effect in Photoshop.

And one thing led to another and I ended up mocking up a 70s style cover for the story... 

Rather than go with the old Target branding, I've taken the liberty of dipping into another alternate universe where popular annual and colouring book publishers, World Distributors, took over the novelisation line. (A bit unlikely I know - even for the seventies - but these alternate universes that pop up in my office are somewhat weird anyway...) 

I ended up doing the whole of season thirteen in the end... 

Dr Who Activity Books for Christmas 1974!

Since Doctor Who returned in 2005, there have been a plethora of children's activity books. From the usual colouring books to the more specific 'Regeneration Activity & Sticker Book', there seems to be no end of them.

Back in the 70s, World Distributors came up with a handful of colouring books - particularly later into Tom Baker's run as the Doctor.

With my interest in creating new vintage Target covers for the classic series waning a little, I thought it would be fun to adapt Tom's first season into a series of World Distributors 70s-style activity books. 

In an alternate timeline, these were hastily created for the 1974 Christmas marker and to tie-in with the new Doctor's debut over the festive period. As such, precious little photographic material was available and the compilers of these gems had to use what little was freely available... 

They did try though...

(...despite Terry Nation's agent not playing ball again!)