The Space Museum

Having completed The Chase it seemed only fair to follow it with The Space Museum as again I'd already done a rough design before my summer break. My first concern with any cover, but particularly those like this for which not many photos were taken, is whether I'll be able to find a suitable photo of the Doctor. Fortunately in this case there were a couple of the him being held by the Moroks, and although I found the shot I decided to use in DWM, I figured once it had been scanned and enlarged it would be no sharper than a screengrab from the DVD's photo gallery, so I went with the latter as the base for my colourisation.

Also fortunate is that Lobos, the main bad guy of the story, is about the only other character of whom there are decent photos. I had thought to use the one of him at the control of his freezing machine, as ultimately used on the official cover, but was concerned that shot and a couple of similar ones all cropped the control dome too tightly and I didn't have enough image sources to extend it. The alternative was that other familiar photo of Lobos sat at his desk on his futuristic phone, which I wasn't too keen on until I had the brainwave to swap his wand-like phone for a gun. Skipping through the DVD, I found a couple of suitable frames of a Morok gun (actually wielded by Ian, whose finger it is on the trigger in my final cover) that were close-up enough that once reduced to fit Lobos's hand it would just about be sharp enough. Luckily the simplicity of his collar made painting out the microphone easy. Slightly more fiddly was removing the odd piece of desk sculpture in front of his right shoulder, but some patches from a different photo of Lobos's collar and positioning the final image suitably over to the left of the cover did the trick. I had thought to remove the rather naff 1960s TV he uses as a monitor, but it filled the gap between Lobos and the Doctor nicely, so I made it more relevant with an image of the TARDIS on the screen.

The time travellers frozen as exhibits is a screengrab, which means it's rather soft despite various attempts to increase the definition, and the exterior wall of the museum - drawn and shaded by hand to keep the edges crisp - made for a suitable background.

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