I’ve decided to try my hand at creating some of these fancy, fan-made, make-it-look-just-like-the-BBC DVD covers. I’m using a template created by “Tempus31”, and hey, you can too. Below, you’ll see a decent-sized thumbnail which leads to a great big full-resolution humdinger of an image (at least I hope that’s what you think of ’em). I’ve re-covered all of my own store-bought Doctor Who DVDs with various fan artists’ Region 2-style covers, if only because the Region 1 cover artwork tends to resemble a squishy brown substance called crap, and I’m trying to return the favor, give a shout-out to the talented fan filmmakers out there, and exorcise some of my own creative demons (ha!) by doing covers for titles that I haven’t seen get this treatment.
With my first effort, naturally, I went and redid the template – go figure. One area that I feel is sorely lacking in the fan-made cover department, unless there’s someone who’s got the market cornered with infinitely better artwork (hey, I wouldn’t doubt it), is the 1990s/early 2000s fan films. I thought I’d have a go at “re-covering” some of these and bringing them in from the continuity cold.
Time Crash (2007 Children In Need special)
I was so jazzed by the prospect of one of my two favorite “classic” Doctors coming back, I whipped this little number up. The great part about it is that, in making a “mirror” cover to give both Doctors top billing, I wiggled out of the fact that, at this point, I don’t know what actually happens in the (yet to air) story. Guess we’ll find out on November 16th, won’t we? I replaced the obligatory 2|entertain logo with Pudsey so nobody forgets why the whole thing’s happening in the first place.
Shakedown: Return Of The Sontarans (1994)
Got a bit more involved with the artwork here. In trying to make the spare battle “pop” a bit, I may have inadvertently made it look goofy (but hey, it’s pre-CGI Doctor Who, right?). Did more tweaks to the “spinoff” template, and started stepping outside of the box a bit with the lower bar on the front cover, giving it a graded color and a texture. The artwork is also heavily textured to try to cover up the fact that it was crappy pixellated screen grabs. I’ve also made available a matching set of redesigned CD covers for the soundtrack CD if you’re interested – you can get that here.
Daemos Rising (2000)
I’m aware that the main image is awfully pixellated; I was really limited to DVD frame grabs here, and it shows. Other than that, I’m mostly happy with it. If there’s any interest, I’d be happy to make my revised “From The World Of BBC-TV’s Doctor Who…” DVD cover template available here.
UK Gold Who@40 Weekend (2003)
I’ve had the various Who@40 segments sitting around for a long, long time now, so I thought I should whip up a cover for them. I wasn’t intending to have a second cover done so soon after the first, but baby-induced insomnia will do that to you. A note about spellings: as I’m designing material with the Region 2 template, which has a better-than-even chance of being used by a Region 2 kind of audience, I do feel compelled to use British spellings on these covers (i.e., “programme”). I actually like the artwork a lot better on this one than on Daemos Rising; the TARDIS on the cover is an original 3-D render I did for a previous project.
Olivia Vs. The Dalek (2006)
What!? You haven’t seen Olivia Vs. The Dalek? Get thee to a browser and go hither. This is another insomnia-induced cover put together just for laughs – there are in-jokes on the standard format aplenty. There are stills of scenes that don’t actually happen in the video, just because I loved the pictures too much to leave them out. (The video’s all of about 2 minutes long.)
Doctor Who, its logo(s), characters and so on, are all of course copyrighted by the BBC. The artwork here is presented for private use only and is NOT for profit; if you spot any such use of it, please feel free to contact me to let me know who was selling stuff with my covers, and where (i.e. convention, web site, etc.). If you want to see some of my other DVD artwork dabblings, click here. I also do some halfway decent video game artwork.
Kind of an old post to be commenting on now, but I much prefer Region 1 covers. (When they actually differed, that is.) I can’t stand the way Region 2 Doctor Who covers always use that colorization, even for stories that weren’t originally in black and white. It’s just a lazy way to get disparate images to blend together.
And that HUGE grey area really takes away from the Region 2 artwork. But they started with it and they’re stuck with it, I guess.
Anyway, *my* Doctor Who covers can be found here:
https://www.edwoodonline.com/GRAFX/home.html
Just click on “Doctor Who” to see BBCi Shada, the leaked version of Rose and *my* take on Time Crash.
One thing I’ve never known (and I may just be stupid for not picking up on this) but is that “front and back of DVD” image something that can be automatically generated by Photoshop or something? I see them all the time, but I don’t use Photoshop. (I’m a Paint Shop Pro man, myself.)
The DVD cover shots are actually produced by a very handy app called Imandix Cover (web site here). It even outputs rotating animated versions, which is something I’ve found incredibly handy lately.
/me runs off to print Cosmic Princess cover