SONTARAN Field Marshal Pinup – Pencils

“The Sontarans are the finest soldiers in the galaxy.” Dr. Who-The Sontaran Stratagem”

The second of my Dr. Who Villains Pinup series- I go back to the less popular, but still very cool villains- the clone soldiers- the SONTARANS. Another legendary villain that was never rendered very epic on the small screen- millions of cloned troops but we normally never saw more than a few of them at once- and they never got to interact with the other main villains… you get the drift- another cool design, sorely underused and never reached it’s full potential… sabotaged by the cheap BBC production values.

My goal was to show the inside of one of the sphere shaped “capsule” ships with a major officer (Field Marshal) overseeing his wars against the Daleks and Cybermen. The back story I made up was the Field Marshal has pitted his enemies against each other. The viewscreens show Dalek Soldiers running over Cybermen and a Cyber Controller on the main screen to build the atmosphere. Simultaneously the other monitors show Sontaran Capsule ships and ground troops, as well as the TARDIS getting a small cameo- the Doctor, working against all odds to stop the nefarious alien plot. I loved seeing complex images like this as a kid, and trying to piece a story together out of it. I left enough hints and pieces for a young fan to cobble a tale out of this image while using their own imagination, sort of a fanboy “pay it forward”.

I wanted to go in a different direction from my Dalek War shot of damaged ground troops in action at a planet surface level to an “Eye in the Sky” of the overseeing officer with lots of cameos and a claustrophobic interior ship view. Inpiration for this came (esp the two foot pedals!) when I also saw a 2 second cameo of in the Dr. Who Anime that inspired this whole project here at the 10:37 mark I wanted to see this more fleshed out. After I laid this out, I found the shot of the semi interior of a Sontaran ship with a bunch of screens (included below in my source materials) – I guess someone had the same idea I had, which made me laugh a bit… but I think I fleshed it out a great deal more- and gave the interior of the ship and the Sontaran Field Marshal a really sweet layout and environment to have inside the really generic ship they use!

My first thumbnail was a generic “front facing” image, which I then turned in the rough pencils to a more dynamic and fun perspective which I fleshed out in the final pencils.

Anyway- enjoy this Sontaran Field Marshal in action, and look for some sweet inks on these pencils soon!