Of dogs, storms, and really amateurish artwork

We had a pretty loud storm tonight, but there was more fanfare about it on TV than there was actual storm. (It had raised all kinds of hell in Tulsa, though, so it was worth at least watching the TV coverage to keep an eye on it.) One big clap of thunder woke Evan up. This was also one of the first times in months that Xena came into the house. I’ve gotten to where I let her sit out rainstorms out on the side deck, but when we’re talking hail and worse, yeah, I’m a softie, the dog gets to come in. Naturally, she crashed out, Olivia played with her tail, Obi slept next to her, and she stood guard over Evan. Everybody loves the little guy.

Today was one of those days where I just didn’t have the brainpower to do anything useful, and was leaving the Avid powered down for the whole day (the first tornado watch was popped on us before noon), so I did a little bit of just-for-the-sheer-heck of it design work, and joined the ranks of those who do fan-made Doctor Who DVD covers. Rather than do the 37th cover for some well-known episode that hasn’t even officially been released yet, however, or a “fantasy football” cover for a lost story, I decided to go way off the beaten path: I thought I’d do a DVD cover for a fan film. I altered the basic template a bit and added the now-standard “From the world of BBC-TV’s Doctor Who…” wording that accompanies spinoff productions like Big Finish’s Dalek Empire audios, and came up with this:

(You can download the full-res printable version here. The nifty 3-D mockup abo0ve was generated by an insanely useful program called Imandix Cover, which you can download free here.) While I’m happy with the intent of the artwork, the actual execution is just a bit crap – since it was all done with screencaps from the DVD itself, the main artwork, when you look at it really close up, is very pixellated. Still, I’d like to think I wasn’t a zillion miles off stylistically; I’ve posted it to the forums at Outpost Gallifrey, where I’m sure that my assessment of “crap” may be confirmed very quickly. 😆 But not to be dissuaded, I’m already working on another cover, this time for a series of irreverent “I Love The ’80s”-style documentary segments that aired in 2003. So if I want to burn these to DVD, I can put a cover on the DVD that’ll look something like:

I tried to be a little more…well…artistic with this one. K-9 and the time vortex are screen grabs, while the TARDIS is a 3-D model that I rendered myself. I’d like to tackle Shakedown: Return Of The Sontarans soon, just because…well…it’d be kinda relevant at the moment. 😉 For giggles, I ran my old Countdown To Looking Glass cover through Imandix, which didn’t like the dimensions and chopped some of the artwork off:

…oops. Guess I need to take that one back to the drawing board before I go too far into Who territory. Though ironically, I still like the CTLG artwork better than either of the Who pieces.

Also on my to-do list: an official Doctor Who DVD cover for Olivia vs. the Dalek. 😆