Star Wars Fan Art

scenes we've never seen

BTW, these are posted entirely for fun, I have no attachment to Lucasfilm
The following images show my general thought process when I'm designing concept art with a story narrative in mind.
INITIAL ROUGHS

Smuggler's Blues - Han and Chewie surprised during a botched smuggle.

Beggar's Canyon - Luke and Biggs piloting their T-16 Skyhoppers.

Droid Hunt A- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

Droid Hunt B- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

While I'm working on these rough drawings, I am also thinking about the layouts and how they would work in a cinematic environment. I like where Droid Hunt is going, but I want to explore it further. My goal is to have these compositions reflect the same sensibilities of the original trilogy's cinematography. The aesthetic created by the use of simple, bold shapes might seem dated by today's standards, but IMO this design approach helped tell a much better story. We, (the viewers) were not distracted by all the "bells and whistles" found in a lot of films today. Our brains were allowed to absorb this fantastic story and not be overwhelmed by how cool stuff looks.

Lando's Lament A- Lando distraught by his decision to work with Vader.

Lando's Lament B- Lando distraught by his decision to work with Vader.

Lando's Lament C- Lando distraught by his decision to work with Vader.

Due to some work commitments, I was not able to explore any further ideas at this point, so I chose to expand on Droid Hunt and Lando's Lament as I felt the emotional overtones of each idea would be fun to work with.
LAYOUT REFINEMENTS

Droid Hunt 1- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

Using basic photography methods, I begin to hone in on a layout. The "Rule of Thirds" for instance, is the simplest way to help identify regions in a scene that are accepted as "more dynamic" to viewers. It's not the only method to aid in good composition, but it's the easiest to implement. I also wanted to utilize stronger shapes, so I began to block in my layouts with simple silhouettes.
I abandoned this sketch because it had less emotion as an aerial shot. When I pulled the camera away from the POV shot I initially established, the characters lost focus.

Droid Hunt 2- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

I abandoned this sketch as well because the linear, left-to-right layout felt too mechanical. I like that I'm starting to use bolder shapes, but they could be combined or unified more thoughtfully, to push the abstract.

Droid Hunt 3- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

This might have been a good direction. I mulled over going with this one for a bit, as I liked the POV a lot. The low angle showed the perilous nature of Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's predicament by giving the Stormtroopers a domineering presence (above) and over them. I ultimately decided against it, because of the negative space in the top left of the frame. Negative space is good, but this felt unbalanced. If I worked further I could have done something to correct the issue, but time was running out and I had to make an executive decision, so I scratched it.

Droid Hunt 4- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

This one was discarded because the POV through the Troopers' legs kind of felt too much like a "Shoot out at the OK Corral" shot. It wasn't emotional enough for me. However, what I did like about this sketch was my use of a better shape language. I'm also beginning to think in terms of fore, middle and background staging.

Droid Hunt 5- The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

I'm liking this because we the viewers are now involved in this scene. It's as if we we're seeing what's about to happen from a Stormtrooper's POV. I did feel like the left side of the frame lacked balance once again, so one more, I promise!

Droid Hunt 6 - The Empire will resort to the darkest of atrocities.

By adding a trooper and the second moon of Tatooine (on the left), I think I reached a decent layout here. I also pulled the camera back a bit to speak more to the aesthetic established in "A New Hope." George Lucas used a lot of medium shots in the film, so I wanted to do something similar.

Trooper line art - Guidelines used to paint the final Troopers.

What has perspective, proportion and fluid shape design? A Stormtrooper's armor! Note to self never paint these guys again when on a tight deadline.
COLOR ROUGHS

Droid Hunt Color Rough - Color palette, time of day & mood.

Droid Hunt Color Rough 2 - Color palette, time of day & mood.

I was not happy with the first color palette, and also decided to flip the layout. I wanted to leverage the bold shape of foreground Trooper and his flamethrower to serve as a subliminal left to right lead into the scene.

Droid Hunt Final Concept Painting

Lando's Lament Final Concept Painting

Wok commitments really cut into my time to work on the Lando image,so this image was created fairly quickly. I completed the painting in about 7 hours. The image lacks a lot of elements I wanted to include, (such as some foreground elements for story and better staging, as well as some general architectural details in the room) The detail on both Vader and Fett was very time consuming. Not to mention, that Millenium Falcon... I actually painted the Bespin scout ships in 10 minutes, and mistakenly painted Fett's uniform similar to how it was in Return of the Jedi. For the purpose of this gallery, I went back and corrected that, but left the rest the same. (see below detail image for the first incorrect Fett version)

Droid Hunt Details

Lando's Lament Details

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