Tony Clark

Clark holding a Rutan model behind the scenes on Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans.

Tony Clark is an artist, illustrator, and animator who ran the art department of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society in the early-1980s. As such, he provided dozens of black-and-white illustrations for DWAS fanzines such as the official publication TARDIS as well as logos for the DWAS newsletter Celestial Toyroom and Interface, DWASocial, plus DWAS convention booklets. Clark also provided the layout for a number of DWAS yearbooks and published an art department special, the United Galactic Holidays Brochure, and A3-size DWAS season posters for the 18th, 19th, and 20th seasons.

In addition during the 1980s, he provided covers for many of the early Reeltime Pictures Myth Makers VHS interview tapes of Doctor Who stars.

Clark was the cover artist for the Target novelisations of The Rescue and The Space Pirates and provided interior illustrations for the Encyclopedia of The Worlds of Doctor Who: A-D, E-K, and L-R, worked on back-projected animations shown during the stage play Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure, and helped out on the various interview and drama video recordings for Thirty Years in the TARDIS, as well as providing graphics for posters seen in the drama settings of the documentary.

As a result of that work, he was made animation director for the title sequence of The Antique Doctor Who Show — one of the five-minute vignettes that preceded the repeat of Planet of the Daleks across six weeks in November and December 1993. The short is available as an extra on the Horror of Fang Rock DVD.

Clark also illustrated the covers for the script books of The Daleks and The Tomb of the Cybermen, published by Titan Books. In addition, he worked on Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans as a boom operator and production designer as well as providing additional model and FX animation.

In 1998, the original illustration that accompanied a TARDIS interview with Nicholas Courtney — completed 18 years earlier (when Clark was 18) — was hung in The Maynard Arms pub in Crouch End where Clark and friends regularly drank with Courtney. The actor signed the artwork twice, as he didn't think his first signature was very good. The illustration was taken by the landlord of the pub a couple of years later when he left and its current whereabouts are unknown.

On the classic series of Doctor Who, Clark helped out on the costumes for the Gods of Ragnarok for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and the wax heads of the Destroyer that was blown up at the end of Battlefield. He also appeared on Children in Need in 2003 as a Sontaran in the Dead Ringers sketch Dead Ringers Do Doctor Who On The Weakest Link. In addition, Clark portrayed a Sontaran in an unbroadcast sketch for Dead Ringers. His costume is now on display at the Doctor Who Experience (London/Cardiff).

On the Doctor Who media front, he has lent his photo collection for use in the classic series range of DVD photo galleries, for which he has sometimes been credited.

He also played a UNIT Soldier in the Reeltime Pictures home video Downtime in 1995.

Clark was a Dalek in the 1998 BBC promo officially entitled Future Generations — although BBC publicity referred to it as Small People — made to mark 50 years of children's television on the BBC and originally shown during that year's Children in Need appeal. He is in the Dalek chasing the Blue Peter zoo keeper.

Outside the worlds of Doctor Who, Clark has been an assistant at Walt Disney Films, where he worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He subsequently went freelance in the animation industry, which has seen him involved with hundreds of projects. These have included television adverts such as the Compare The Market campaign, videos for the virtual band Gorillaz, the film version of Lost in Space plus the movie Miss Potter, and Thomas the Tank Engine.

He is not to be confused with the Anthony Clark who played a Vervoid in the 1993 Children in Need special Dimensions in Time.

External links

• Tony Clark at the Internet Movie Database