Doctor Who and the Colourisation of Doom

Patrick Troughton

2009-06-16T10:50:55Z

I don't know what story this is from (any ideas?), but to mark the opening of Gallifrey Base I thought I'd put together a quick new colourisation:

The Dalek's Master Plan

2009-02-25T21:31:18Z

New one!

It's a bit simple looking, but there's not that much you can do with Daleks and bricks really.

The Web of Fear

2009-02-15T20:04:39Z

A new colourisation competition entry now, with this rather difficult shot from The Web of Fear:

I'm not too keen on how it's turned out to be honest, but with the original image being in the state it was it was pretty difficult to get any colour to stick quite how I wanted it.

The Web Planet

2009-01-20T22:46:51Z

Yes, another revamp of an older colourisation. Don't blame me! The colourisation competition keeps throwing them up and I feel obliged to do them!

However, you can blame me for the lack of updates. That one's purely down to laziness.

I've already gotten a bit rusty, and this certainly wasn't the easiest of pictures to get back into form with (the Menoptera was a hassle to get looking halfway decent). Anyway, I might tweak it further later on. Can't be bothered right now.

It's an improvement over the 2005 version in my eyes, but that's hopefully to be expected.

On a bit of a tangent, the news regarding Planet of the Daleks episode 3 being colourised is very good to hear. It sounds as though the quality is impressive, and hopefully the combined techniques will allow something as close to the original as possible. If only we weren't in the middle of this "credit crunch" (gah, hate that phrase) then the prospect of more would seem a lot more likely. As it is, I think that unless the Dalek War box-set sells more than expected we probably won't be seeing any more colourised episodes in the near future. Of course, my business sense stinks, so with any luck I'm completely wrong.

On another tangent (I'm swerving all over the place here), you may have seen this link before. It's an interesting process, and one that is available via a program called Recolored (yeah, sounds American to me too). I've been dabbling with the trial and, while it can take a few attempts to get acceptable looking pictures, it does produce some interesting results. Here's one of the sample pictures supplied with the program that I've tried the process on:

I chose the image because it had skin tones, which is one of the things I wasn't convinced it would be able to pull off successfully. Of course the results aren't perfect, and I don't know what advantages the full program would have (if any) over the trial. For an experiment though, it doesn't work too badly.

The Aztecs

2008-10-17T22:03:26Z

Another DWF competition entry, this time a rather nice shot from The Aztecs:

The Celestial Toymaker

2008-09-28T13:21:54Z

Really not happy with this one for some reason. I'll probably go back and mess around with it later.

The Celestial Toymaker

2008-09-27T22:08:54Z

Not sure about this one. It wasn't a great quality picture to begin with, so that always make the colour "sit" a little strangely.

An Unearthly Child

2008-09-21T19:28:24Z

Bit of an odd image here. None of it seemed to like taking colour very well. I'm not sure if I like the result or not really!

Sylvester McCoy

2008-09-12T22:01:02Z

From slightly later in Doctor Who's life than usual, a publicity picture from when Mr McCoy stepped into the TARDIS.

The Wheel in Space

2008-08-23T15:48:32Z

Over a month since my last colourisation, you say? Crikey. Blame holidays. I always make a point of trying to cut myself off from technology somewhat when on holiday, but now I'm back at home I can crack out the crayons again!

Once again an image I've done before has been chosen for the DWF competition. The first one I tried, back in 2005! Here's my updated effort:

The War Games

2008-07-20T14:53:13Z

This was actually one of the first images I colourised, back in 2005. It has come up again though as the subject of this week's DWF colourisation challenge, so rather than resubmit the original I decided to start from scratch.

You can see the original after the jump.

While I've tried to keep the tone of the image the same, I think it gives a good indication of how my style's changed over the years!

Title Sequence

2008-07-13T08:58:04Z

An interesting choice of image this week! Was a bit fiddly (the colour takes very oddly to various bits of the image, so I had to break it down to layers and tweak the individual saturations. Plus, there's not really any "information" there for Pat's hair, so I decided to follow that and just have the vortexy colours come through), but overall I'm happy with the end result:

Off topic again, I know, but I thought I'd better follow up my views on the series 4 finale. It was a cop-out. Only way to put it really. The Daleks were defeated by flipping some switches (inside Davros' prison cell? Why would they leave that lying around there for him to use?), and no-one actually died! On the plus side, if Donna ever comes back to the series her head explodes, so I'm happy.

Davros was fantastic though. Best version of him yet. I wanted to see more of him and the Supreme Dalek too, those clamp things looked like they were going to open to reveal something interesting!

But towing Earth home? How craptacular.

Still, the general public loved it, so at least the series is secure for some time to come.

The Reign of Terror

2008-06-29T21:37:55Z

Completely off topic, but gosh, wasn't 'Who good last night?! Julian Bleach continued to show how good he is at "creepy" performances, becoming the definitive Davros for the modern day audience (and possibly of all time?).

There was a feeling feeling that four years of weird little hints are drawing to a close, answering questions in a kind of vague "Lost-ish" way and leaving a clean slate for a new production team. And that cliffhanger! Totally unexpected.

It was a brilliant cross-over special that didn't feel too "shopping list-y". The only let down was Catherine Tate, but my views on her are well documented.

But generally, brilliant. Fantastic. Wow.

Just hope the finale lives up to expectations now!

The Dominators

2008-06-07T17:06:25Z

This one was a bit of a challenge due to the fuzzy source image, but after a bit of effort it's turned out okay I think.

Lots of guessed colours here, but I think you're allowed a bit of artistic license with these things!

I managed to make a can of diet coke explode halfway through making this picture, so I've now got a pretty much ruined white t-shirt, a sticky keyboard and mouse and a dark stain in the crotch area of my only clean pair of blue jeans. Nice.

Jon Pertwee

2008-05-26T12:40:51Z

An image taken at a 1973 "BBC TV Special Effects Exhibition", based in the Science Museum, London. According to the book Doctor Who and the Daleks, the two Daleks were seen to move slightly and "talked". I thought it was a nice picture, anyway!

Patrick Troughton

2008-05-25T15:11:43Z

The mighty Trout in all his glory.

The Chase

2008-05-24T11:15:27Z

...one...hundred...thirty...Mechanoid...

The Claws of Axos

2008-05-17T15:12:52Z

This week's DWF colourisation challenge entry. Was a weird one to do, but ultimately I'm quite happy with the result.

The Silurians

2008-05-10T14:06:01Z

A rather nice image from The Silurians for this week's DWF colourisation challenge.

Power of the Daleks

2008-05-03T20:20:55Z

DWF Colourisation Challenge week 2. My choice of image this week. Was quite a nice picture to do, actually.

Marco Polo

2008-04-26T20:23:01Z

I realise that no-one probably reads here any more, what with the infrequent updates, but I like to keep all my pictures in one place so I'm going to carry on posting!

The weekly colourisation challenge has started up again on DWF (you know, it's like OG but different). This image is from Marco Polo, strangely.

The Five Doctors

2008-02-24T20:17:39Z

I actually coloured this a while ago and posted it on OG (sorry, DWF!), but didn't post it here originally as I don't count it as a "proper" colourisation. It was really a tester for my new monitor to see if the levels were correct, and as such is very rough around the edges.

Anyway, what with the impending release of The Five Doctors on DVD I thought I might put it here in a more permanent home.

India Fisher

2007-07-31T14:07:30Z

A slightly different picture now (being a recent one and a standard portrait photograph). I did this at the request of Tempus from OG, and I thought I'd put it here as it turned out quite nicely.

The source image was a bit small, so this is as big and detailed as it gets unfortunately:

Galaxy 4

2007-06-05T14:38:57Z

*Climbs out of grave* I'm not dead! Huzzah! I got incredibly bored not doing any work and so I decided to try out colouring something again. The background's a bit dodgy, but aside from that I'm quite happy with it.

Blake's 7

2007-01-08T22:23:49Z

Happy new ears!

Tempus on OG requested these pictures from Blake's 7 to be colourised for some fiendish reason (involving his DVD covers I imagine). As I was itching to do a bit of colouring work I gave them a go, and here be the finished results:

I went a bit mad on the second one trying to make it look 'moody'. The poor source image didn't help, and I think the end result may have been a bit odd. Anyway, they're a bit of an experiment in new techniques (in particular layering, which I haven't really used before).

Got 'The Invasion' through the post today, and managed to watch episodes 1 to 4 just now. Very good animation, isn't it? It's a crying shame that it looks like no more are on the horizon.