Recently, Alex Hewitt spoke to Big Finish cover artist Ash Tankersley about their work for the various Doctor Who and spin-off ranges that they have designed artwork for. This interview is presented exclusively here on Who Review.

Hi Ash! Thanks for talking to us. How did your career as an artist start? Was it something you were interested in from an early age?

It’s funny – I didn’t really have a lot of visual art inclinations when I was younger. I was also the kind of kid who loved colouring, but I was frustrated that you had to do it inside of the lines! So I didn’t do it often. I got into art in around 2016/2017, because at the time my preferred mode of creativity was writing stories and planning stuff out like that. And I thought, ‘hey, it would be fun if I make some visual art for these’. I thought it would help with the writing process, and then I discovered that I liked doing photo editing and art more than I liked writing!

When did it become a job?

It was more of a hobby to begin with. It sort of became part of the job that I had around 2018 to 2022 but was never really big. My first proper art job was actually for Big Finish.

How did you become involved with working for Big Finish?

I got an email one day from one of their producers – the lovely Alfie Shaw. He basically just mentioned that Big Finish was on the hunt for some new artist talent, and would I be willing to do the artwork for The Twelfth Doctor Chronicles? I got that email and just started jumping up and down, having the opposite of a panic attack – just super happy, super excited. Then I had to sit back down and pretend that I’m professional and composed and say, ‘hello Alfie, yes, I would love to do this cover’ while screaming internally!

The Twelfth Doctor Chronicles: Timejacked! was your first work for Big Finish. How did you find taking over the range from Tom Webster? Did you try to emulate his style closely?

Definitely. It’s sort of in keeping with what’s come before but also Tom’s work is some of my favourite art stuff ever. It’s evocative and world-building, and so I’ve always tried to sort of add bits of that style that I liked into my own [artworks]. So that was a lot of fun, getting to do that.

I actually was also able to talk with and work with Tom in creating the cover, sort of as a handover, ‘get to know how to do your first Big Finish cover’ thing, which was super helpful and amazing. But yeah, it definitely felt like there was a massive weight on my shoulders because I was looking at all of these other covers that have been done for the set, and [thinking] there’s no way I can live up to this so I’m going to give it my best shot!

How did you then get to know the rest of the Big Finish team?

A combination of working with Tom and other creatives seeing my Twelfth Doctor Chronicles artwork.

You also work on The Ninth Doctor Adventures – there is a relatively limited number of stills of the Ninth Doctor, so how are you able to create covers that remain looking new?

I definitely try not to re-use pictures as much as is possible, because we want it to seem fresh and new and not immediately make you think of story two from set one from two years ago! But most of the time whenever I get a brief for a new Ninth Doctor set, the first thing that I’ll do is start looking at the pictures of Chris that haven’t been used yet. I plan each of the covers around those, trying to take note of the important set locations, to create a world around the characters. [Also] what other characters are most prominent, what they’re wearing, what the time period is, what kinds of effects would look cool. Stuff like that.

And you finally got the Ninth Doctor’s turtleneck in! [An unused early costume idea for the Ninth Doctor included a turtleneck under his jacket, which has now appeared on the cover of Northern Lights.]

Yes! That was so much fun.

You’ve also worked on the Eighth of March range – how important is it to you that there is a Big Finish series that celebrates all of the women involved with Doctor Who, and what are some highlights of designing those covers?

I think it’s extremely important, personally. It’s really good to set aside a specific set and range to highlight all of the various women who have supported the show, whether that’s acting, behind-the-scenes, [or] writing. It’s really easy to take them for granted and it’s nice to see a specific celebration of that.

Designing them is a lot of fun – designing any Big Finish cover is fun, but it’s not every day that you get a brief for a story in a set that’s got to include Missy, and Amelia Pond, and the Fourth Doctor and Leela with Marie Curie! It’s great.

It’s a fun challenge taking modern, high-definition photos and older photos and trying to make them look like they were taken in the same place at the same time.

What’s your process for that?

It really depends on what photos I’m working with. Because different techniques will work better with different ones, I’ve found. For example, on the Eighth of March set I was using the Fourth Doctor and Leela from Image of the Fendahl. There’s this great, evocative photo of the two of them by the gates to the house that we wanted to use. The problem is, because it was taken on a black-and-white film camera in 1977, it’s kind of washed-out and really grainy.

So I had to use a bunch of Photoshop tools to try and remove the grain and also bring back some of the detailing, using contrast, noise removal, all those sorts of things.

It must be satisfying when it’s done and it looks like new!

Yes, yes, yes. [Photoshop tools] lightning and dodging and burning are absolute life savers.

In a similar vein, how have you found the process of essentially creating new promotional photos of the Eleventh Doctor and Valarie Lockwood for the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles?

It’s been so much fun! I actually was able to get a little bit of creative input on the poses that we were doing with Safiyya [Ingar] as Valarie. So I was in talks with the producer early on and thinking, ‘here are some of the layouts we’re thinking about using down the line – could we get them to pose in a certain way?’

With the first set, I noticed that there was this great shot of Matt [Smith] running, and we thought, ‘what if we did that cover as an echo of the Series 5 promos with Matt and Karen running down the time vortex?’ We thought we could get a shot of Valarie matching that, which led to that cover!

You’ve also created the first Big Finish cover to use the Tenth Doctor-era Cybermen…

Yes! I’m very happy to finally be able to talk about that one! That’s been in the works for a while. The Tenth Doctor ‘Cybus’ Cybermen are honestly my favourite Cyberman design. They’re so retro but so cool and scary. They’re the only ones that actually gave me nightmares as a kid.

Was that your decision to use them?

It was requested specifically by Alfie, as I remember. We really wanted to try and use them in Eleven’s era, because they’re sort of a little bit underused at some points. It also made more sense as the image we wanted to use as the centrepiece for that cover – Valarie reaching towards the camera with the Cyber-arms.That was a vision that Alfie had from the beginning, so right back when we first started talking about the covers we were going to do for the Eleventh Doctor, we always knew that once we got to set three with the Cybermen that that’s what we were going to do. And there’s definitely more shots of ‘Cybus’ arms in that position than there were of the Nightmare in Silver design. That influenced us to go in that direction as well.

For sets such as The Tenth Doctor Chronicles Volume 2, what’s it like having to decide what certain aliens are going to look like? How much creative input do you have in those scenarios?

It’s very much a collaborative effort. A lot of times, there are some really good descriptions and details in the scripts and in the storylines that give me a good idea of what we want them to look like. I’ll create something off of that, send it in for a review, and we can figure out if it works or not. Then, for example, the Vulpreen from the UNIT series was very much a collaborative effort between the producer, the writer, and myself. We specifically wanted to create a monster with a certain vibe and a certain look. I love working in roundtables like that – it’s so creatively freeing and fun.

You mentioned the process of looking at scripts – do different producers give different types of brief?

It’s often a combination of scripts, storylines, and sometimes just, ‘here’s the idea that we’re going for, here’s what we want the cover to look like,’ and then I just go off and create something based off of that and see if it works or not.

Are there any specific covers that were especially fun to work on?

The first Ninth Doctor set I did [Back to Earth], which was so much fun to do. That was loads of fun, both because Eccleston is one of my favourite Doctors, very much a childhood Doctor of mine, and the idea of getting to do new art for his continuing adventures was incredible. Also, again the collaborative process of working with a producer and authors to realise all four of the covers across the set was great. 

The process of creating the Grimminy-Grew, the monster from the first story, was really fun. I read the script and thought it could be fun to portray it caught between the two forms of human and ‘unknowable eldritch demon god thing’. I just mocked something up and sent it off and we collaborated on it from there.

You mentioned that you do four covers per boxset for the Ninth Doctor – how do you ensure all the stories are represented on releases where you only get one cover?

I feel like it can get a little more difficult doing ‘overall’ covers, but I like that because it’s a nice challenge. I like to have a read through of all the stories from a specific set and try to come up with the mean, average ‘vibe’, if that’s a scientific term!

For example, the Seventh Doctor set from the end of last year, Sullivan and Cross – AWOL, was really fun to do for that reason. There are two stories in there, one with elves and the London underground, and one with Daleks and Halloween. My thoughts were, ‘this is going to be really fun to combine,’ because they seem like such disparate ideas. But I just hit upon the idea of an autumnal vibe. Elves have that same sort of orange-yellow evening glow in my head that I also associate with Halloween, so basing the cover around that hopefully helps tie it all together!

That cover in particular is just amazing, because you’ve got Harry Sullivan who has very few promo shots existing, the Seventh Doctor in his TV Movie outfit that needs to be re-created, and Naomi Cross from the present day! How did you manage to combine those and make it look so good?

That was a process, for sure. Harry was probably the most intensive, just because there are so few photos of him in the archive which is so sad and so unfortunate because I love Harry. Ian Marter is just so incredible and the fact that they didn’t document his time on the show more kind of kills my heart a little bit. The photo that I used for him I think was [made from] a body from Revenge of the Cybermen, and a head from The Sontaran Experiment. For the body I also had to warp and duplicate one of the arms to the other side because it was hidden by one of the aliens from Revenge.

Did you have to re-create the Seventh Doctor’s outfit from scratch?

Yes. I love finding ways to create looks and costumes that aren’t expected. It’s a hobby of mine that I also do with some friends outside of work. That one wasn’t quite as difficult because I was able to find a really good set of stock photos of a guy with the same general build as Sylvester in a tweed jacket with a waistcoat. At that point all I had to do was recolour the jacket to make it the right shade, and recolour the waistcoat so it was red. So not too bad!

Many thanks to Ash for speaking to us. Their Big Finish works can be found at https://www.bigfinish.com/contributors/v/Caroline-Tankersley-11745, and they can be found on Twitter @soundsmythprod.