The King's Demons

My starting point for this cover was how (or indeed whether) to feature Kamelion. Obviously he's the lynchpin around which the rest of the story rotates, but I didn't want to give the game away too much (while I know my covers are used by fans who are familiar with the series, I still like to treat them as if they could be 'official' ones in the shops and try to avoid too many spoilers) and he's not strictly a villain. From that point of view I was more keen to feature King John. So one possibility was to include them both, perhaps in similar poses to hint at the idea they're one and the same. I wasn't keen on this as it seemed a bit obvious and I felt I'd probably seen it done on other fan covers (and then Clayton went and did it on his official one!). So I went instead with the idea of using King John but with a hint of his true nature. Not screen accurate, and not really any less subtle, but I'm pleased with the execution.

There were two or three usable shots of the Doctor I could have used, and although the original of the one I finally chose had him reaching out to a door handle with his left hand, I knew the angle of his body would allow me to paint out that arm without him looking odd. For the background, I had saved a good high-resolution photo of Bodiam Castle that I'd found ages ago for potential use whenever The King's Demons was released, and while I briefly considered using a shot of the interior castle set given I had King John sitting in his chair, I decided to stick with my original plan so I could have the Master looming overhead. The original photo of the castle had a bright blue sky, so I replaced this with a shot of some doomy clouds at sunset. I added the rays of light by copying the clouds layer onto a new channel, upping the contrast and levels so only the very lightest areas remained, applied some radial blur and then used the result as a selection to add the rays in a layer above the clouds image.

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