WhoSprites: The Lost Who Animation Project

[John Andersen]

Oct 21, 2009 18:53:48 GMT garrettgilchrist said:

The DVD folk sort of dismissed me as a crank.

They always say they are looking into animations. They try to convince the public they are doing something when they are not. Typical of most politicians that are in office today.

[garrettgilchrist]

Well, they weren't lying - they were looking into it, but it's money. It's expensive to hire an established animation company, much more expensive than your usual Doctor Who DVD extra budget. I'm extremely cheap, but I doubt they'd want to take a chance on an unknown, which is fair enough. It does seem true that they announced the animations mainly to stop people from complaining about the Galaxy 4 recon being dropped!

It makes sense that they wouldn't be looking too hard at submissions by random people on the internet, even semiprofessionals and professionals [like, y'know, the guys who do the show Metalocalypse.]. My early tests were not up to my current standards anyway .... the Evil of the Daleks stuff ....

[garrettgilchrist]

So yesterday I drew four Susans, all of which looked pretty terrible. I was finding Susan a hard likeness to capture.



This was my first attempt, and possibly the worst of them all. However, something about the image appealed to me. For whatever reason, I thought it still had potential.

So, god help me, I decided to develop it as a finished sprite.

The first thing I realized was that it actually wasn't too bad in context .... once you could see the shape of her entire face, it started to look a lot better. Carole Ann Ford has unusual features, but in context they make a lot more sense. I cleaned up the sprite a bit, fixed the proportions, drew her hair, and colored her in.



Susan. Version three. Colored. Not too bad considering. It's not my most elegant line art ever, but it looks like her.

The reference was from the second serial, "Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Dalek Mutants of the Dead Planet." So was Ian yesterday, come to think of it. Part of her hair reference was two images from An Unearthly Child.

In the reference, a Thal fellow is casting a shadow across half her face, and she's a bit dirty. Her features were a little hard to see, but I colored her face as clean and unshadowed.


A fellow called Chris Batten has been doing CGI heads in Facegen, of some of the characters. [Polly, Zoe, Peri and Mel of all people, so far.] I don't do a lot of CGI, as I spend all my time on 2D and most people do 3D better than I do.

However, I thought I'd take his heads into Poser and render them.



Here's Polly, in an approximation of her Highlanders costume.




Here's Zoe, in her Wheel in Space outfit.


Quite good versions of the characters. I had to do a tiny bit of postwork, as the head and eye textures are a little dark or a little grey, and not quite right. If I render them again I'll color them a bit brighter first.

[Rob Moss]

You see, the problem I have with CGI interpretations of people such as the images above is that they don't bloody look anything like who they're meant to be! So, as I see it, you might as well recast the episodes and dub the original sound over, for all the authenticity you're getting.

[garrettgilchrist]

I'm not a big CGI fan either.

Hence me drawing thousands of 2D images, I suppose!

[garrettgilchrist]

General Cutler. Supporting character played by Robert Beatty in The Tenth Planet. Finished for animation in color with 23 alternate heads.

I updated his coloring a little bit before finishing him, but with the extra details I added, his jawline started to look a little too photorealistic - which can get creepy if I'm not careful. My style has to be detailed .... but not TOO detailed ... it's a fine line.




Dodo Chaplet. Quirky first Doctor companion played by Jackie Lane. Finished for animation in color with 22 alternate heads.

This was an old sprite, drawn in December 2007 and colored last year - end of July, I think. I cleaned up her coloring a bit before finishing her. The line art was scanned in low resolution with my terrible old scanner, way back when, but was fairly easy to clean up to a current standard.

I'm well aware that I've finished her to a higher quality now than I would have back then.




Miss Garrett. Supporting character played by Wendy Gifford in The Ice Warriors. Finished for animation in color with 33 alternate heads. I colored her first 11 heads back in March, and prepared all the line art for coloring. Somehow I never finished her until today. She has jointed bodies with two different costumes, from episodes 2 and 3 of the story.




Updated! Drawn in December 2007, Polly version five is quite an old sprite, finished in color in February 2008. Despite the age of the sprite, and the slight sloppiness of the color and line art, I've always felt this sprite captures Anneke Wills very well.

However, it doesn't animate well. She doesn't have much of a range of expression, and the alternate heads she has aren't all that well drawn or appropriate. The line art I originally drew was quite terrible, and was cleaned up a lot for animation.

A couple weeks back, I decided to revisit the sprite, and draw her a few new alternate heads, to improve how she animates. She originally had 21 alternate heads, with probably 11 different expressions. I drew seventeen new heads for her, raising her total to 38 alternate heads.

[John Andersen]

Oct 24, 2009 9:39:46 GMT garrettgilchrist said:

It does seem true that they announced the animations mainly to stop people from complaining about the Galaxy 4 recon being dropped!

That is what I thought in the first place. When it comes to rumors concerning animations and lost episodes being found, I'll believe it when the animation or lost episode is actually playing in my DVD player. It is sad that they can't afford to animate lost episodes, but they put the money towards extras on the DVDs instead. I'd gladly trade those extras for a couple more animated stories.

[garrettgilchrist]

Me too, but it doesn't really work that way. They have a certain budget to put out a single DVD, extras and all. The extras are considered a selling point - the budget for them isn't huge either. It's just a money making sausage factory. They can't juggle round the budget from one release to pay for another.

If only I had a team of animators to give me a hand with using my artwork to complete an episode or four.

[garrettgilchrist]

Barclay. Played by David Dodimead in The Tenth Planet. Version 2. Colored.

His alternate heads have also been drawn.

This sprite was inspired by this old sprite ...



The alternate heads for this sprite were drawn at the time, but like General Cutler I decided not to use the old material and start from scratch ... even though this was a fairly decent sprite.


Today I drew additional alternate heads for Sara Kingdom/Joanna - her old alternate heads were drawn some time ago, and they were rather poor and there weren't a lot of them. Although she was finished with 14 alternate heads, I decided to draw additional heads and finish her further.

I drew alternate heads for Susan version three, and, as an experiment, a few alternate heads for Susan Two and a couple for Susan One.

I also drew a version of Dyson, another character from The Tenth Planet.

[garrettgilchrist]

Dudley Jones played [John] Dyson in The Tenth Planet. According to IMDB the actor was also known for his tenor singing voice.

Dyson has 25 alternate heads, finished as line art. He's likely to be colored soon.

Dyson only gets one closeup in the surviving episodes, in episode 2. This was the reference used here. He becomes much more important in episode 4.

There's a character who helps him out in the radiation room in episode 4, Haines, who we don't have any clear images of at all .... no idea what he looks like.




Barclay, from The Tenth Planet, is finished for animation in color with 20 alternate heads.



I've also drawn, and finished as line art, eight alternate heads for "Polly Turned ..."

This one:



Likely to be finished in color soon.

[John Andersen]

Oct 26, 2009 14:39:20 GMT garrettgilchrist said:

Me too, but it doesn't really work that way. They have a certain budget to put out a single DVD, extras and all. The extras are considered a selling point - the budget for them isn't huge either. It's just a money making sausage factory. They can't juggle round the budget from one release to pay for another.

That is a pity because they appear to be very good at wasting money. If the budget is so limited, it is a shocker as to why they would waste all that time commissioning a Galaxy Four recon, wasting money by paying others to do the recon, and then not use the recon once it is completed. To pay for extras and not use them as extras is completely illogical. Are they just going to let the finished recon sit and gather dust until the film prints for all four episodes are returned?

[garrettgilchrist]

Probably, but this thread is about pretty pictures and animations, not slagging off the RT .....

[Jessie Orta]

Wonderful work as always. I love looking at this thread. It makes me smile.

[garrettgilchrist]

I have been uploading most of my sprites to megaupload and rapidshare, in hopes of attracting some more animators to the project [which hasn't happened yet].

If anyone is enjoying this artwork and wants a closer look at the full sets of heads, feel free to PM or email me requesting a list of Megaupload/Radidshare links. However, these are not to be distributed all over the internet - I've had my work misused/abused before.



Ben Jackson, version 7, is finished in color with 17 alternate heads. He has a War Machines style body and this Tenth Planet winter coat, which is revamped from a very old body drawn 2 years ago . I was surprised to realize this sprite wasn't finished yet - I had thought I'd finished him two weeks ago, but it seems I didn't .... so I got to work and finished the heads.



John Dyson, played by Dudley Jones in The Tenth Planet, is finished with 25 alternate heads.



Polly "turned" .... this is a pretty bad sprite, but it's finished with 9 alternate heads and should come in handy.



Susan 3 is finished with 21 alternate heads. She is particularly good at looking happy. She comes with this winter coat body from Marco Polo, which is slightly revamped from a very old body made for Susan version 1 two years ago.

I wanted to finish Susan so that I would have one completed animatable sprite for every companion of the Hartnell and Troughton eras. Now I do... this means that every single missing episode is animatable at least for the main characters.



If I ever want to seriously finish a series 1 episode, I would want to do more with the characters .... the finished Ian is a very old sprite with very few alternate heads, and the finished Barbara sprite isn't anything amazing either. I also have some alternate heads drawn for two other versions of Susan, that might get a look in as well.



I also need to finish Odysseus, from The Myth Makers, and the extended set of heads for Sara Kingdom. I drew new heads for Sara because I was unhappy with the very old set of heads drawn for her. I've been holding off working on Odysseus because I drew an unusually large set of heads for him, and the project felt a bit daunting .... not to mention that he has a complex beard.


After those two sprites are done, I'm calling it a day as far as new artwork ... for now .... though I will have to do some more bodies and things ....
I'm intending to focus on animation after that, to actually make use of all this new material. I'm really looking for people who can help with the animation side, so do let me know if you have the talent and are interested.

[garrettgilchrist]

Sara Kingdom is finished for animation! She was finished before, but she's a lot more finished now. She has 31 finished, animatable color heads, and two different bodies. The old one was facing right, this one faces left [as she should be] and is jointed with her limbs separated so that she can move in any way needed. The character played by Jean Marsh is available as Sara Kingdom [The Daleks' Master Plan], and with different hair as Joanna from The Crusade.

Sara Kingdom's bodies are based on a CGI version of her created by myself and rendered in Poser. She is wearing Kirwyn's EZ Casual set for DAZ's Victoria 4, a free outfit available at ShareCG.com. The texture is also freely available at my website, along with many others for other Who characters.

orangecow.org/who-sprites2/1poser
www.sharecg.com/v/8985/poser/EZ-Casual-V4




Odysseus, played by Ivor Salter in The Myth Makers, is [somewhat] finished for animation, with this jointed body. His limbs are separated out for movement. He currently has 21 alternate heads finished in color, but I drew a lot more heads for Odysseus than that, in the range of 60 or so, so I'm intending on finishing more of them, to bring his total head count to 38 or so.

There was a lot of artistic license when creating this body, as my copies of the existing photos of Odysseus aren't very clear. In the photo I was working from, you can't see his arms at all, for instance, and detail was generally lacking. No problem - I've worked from worse!



A new CGI version of Ben Jackson, in his Tenth Planet costume. Obviously I haven't attempted to match Ben's face or hairstyle. This is a costume I've created in Poser before, but this is an improved version done from scratch. Ben is wearing the L75 Casual set for DAZ's Michael 4.

It's a real pleasure to work with Michael 4 rather than the old Michael 3 .... Michael 3 was a very muscular Ken Doll of a man with a large, rounded chest, and most of the clothes available for him didn't have any useful morphs to make him look like a human being - so I ended up with these large-breasted, round shouldered, awful looking characters.

Michael 4 is a much more realistic character to begin with, and most of the outfits available for him have dozens and dozens of morphs built into them, allowing me to choose any body shape I like for the characters and depict them much more accurately.




Here's a new CGI version of Polly, in her Tenth Planet costume. The CGI head seen in this render is by Chris Batten. Previously I had a Poser 4 Woman version of Polly given to me by Nod, but I wanted to start from scratch and do a nice version for DAZ's Victoria 4. Again she's wearing Kirwyn's EZ Casual for the shirt ... which is a terrific and versatile item with many many morphs .... recommended for any V4 user.

www.sharecg.com/v/8985/poser/EZ-Casual-V4

And again the texture is available at my site. [So is Ben's.]
orangecow.org/who-sprites2/1poser

Polly's skirt is another great item by parrotdolphin .... absolutely full of useful morphs and settings:

www.sharecg.com/v/21754/poser/Conforming-Outfit-For-V4-&-Alice