Mr. Peter Swanwick, who played Number 25 The Supervisor on the famous British television show "The Prisoner", lived from 1922 to 1968. Tragically, Mr. Swanwick died just after the show originally was broadcast, eluding the fame he should have enjoyed as the fan-favourite Number 25.
In order to create his collectible action figure mock-up, I needed a good high-resolution image for the packaging. I used a BBC promotional photo and boosted the resolution. Then I re-coloured it to make the image seem like it was printed using old inks. I painted over all of that, attempting to re-create the look of gouache illustration.
Gouache is an opaque watercolour paint. Most watercolour is transparent, so that either the paper shows through the pigment, or else the artist has to make many layers to create solid colour. Gouache is easier to apply than watercolour or acrylic, but it never seems to dry to the same colour as it was when wet. Illustrators, especially back in the 1960's - 1980's favoured gouache, as did animators. With gouache, you can literally draw with paint.
I wanted that older, illustrative look for the Supervisor, with visible hurried brush strokes and bold colour blends. It took about one day to render this. Afterwards, I dumped it into Photoshop and very carefully added a half-tone print effect. The image above is "clean" without the Photoshop effect, but you can see the half-tone in the toy packaging on the finished art. The half-tone was intended to simulate the look of a printed package using older inks and print techniques.
To see the completed Number 25 collectible action figure mock-up, please click here.
To see the completed Number 25 collectible action figure mock-up, please click here.
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