The Sontaran Experiment

My cover for 'The Sontaran Experiment' - a great little two-parter, in my opinion - is now available for download. I was a bit surprised at just how few photos there are for this story when I came to look into it: all those well-known ones of Sarah captured by Styre and, er, that's about it. When I found a decent one of the GalSec guys with the gravity bar (in Howe/Stammers/Walker's 'The Seventies') I knew I wanted to use that, as I hadn't seen it on a cover before and felt it reflected the 'Experiment' element of the title nicely. Obviously I needed a pic of Styre, for which the ever-trusty 'DWM Complete Fourth Doctor' provided me with the only fell-length, facing-on shot I could find. Scanning from a magazine at 200%, he obviously needed quite a bit of touching up to remove the print screening and sharpen his facial details. He was also standing on a slope with his legs at an awkward angle, which I altered to a more upright position, even though they were ultimately mostly hidden on the finished cover. The Doctor also proved tricky. This was the only colour shot of him from the story I found (apart from a very small one in 'The Seventies'), so while his expression's a bit happy, it had to do (again, with much retouching to remove jpeg artefacts). Finally, the background is a shot of Dartmoor downloaded off the internet with the Sontaran ship and a more dramatic sky added in (even though it's mostly behind the logo!), unified with a subtle brown overlay.

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