What kinds of thoughts got you started on the art of Episode I?
When I first started, I didn't know whether George wanted more of the same designs that we had seen in the earlier trilogy--the kind of work that Ralph McQuarrie and Joe Johnston had produced. So I thought a lot about trying to identify the exact look of Star Wars in Ralph's work. I wanted to identify his visual style and the qualities that made it distinctly Star Wars, and incorporate that into my own work.
How would you describe Ralph's style?
Ralph's work displays such grandeur with striking imagery, and I wanted to try to capture that. I considered Ralph's work very closely, and what really struck me was the clarity of design, how well his paintings and ideas read. He has a great sense of fitting bold images into unusual contexts. He present things in unfamiliar contexts, something that George likes very much--the unexpected. This approach adds to the richness and the depth of fantasy world history. In addition, Ralph's colors are just as striking. His palette is fresh and bold, and sometimes stylized.
Stylized colors? Give me an example of what you mean by that.
Well, for instance, Ralph's blues in his Hoth paintings are really strong and vibrant, almost electric blues. Because the paintings work so well, you don't realize right away that those blues are much more stylized than realistic. They're powerfully effective at creating mood, and they feel like the actual movie scenes more than they really look like them.
