I said
to myself, I'm not gonna do
a Star Wars set. Everyone else is doing it. And if I WAS gonna do
a Star Wars set, I certainly wasn't doing
a Drew set. Everyone is doing
a Drew set...
*sigh*
Seeing as I am the biggest Star Wars nerd on the Northern Hemisphere (check out my Star Wars Video collection at
http://www.swonvideo.com) I just couldn't help myself.
It HAD
to be the Drew Struzan posters. For one thing, that's about the only set that unifies all six movies. Mixing and matching posters from several different artists makes it difficult
to make
a cohesive set. Then there's the fact that the Drew posters are bloody excellent (almost, but I'll get
to that later).
I usually start off these ramblings by complaining there's
a lack of available Hi-rez images on the net for my projects. Well, for Star Wars there's
a tonne of it. Still, I wanted
to have textless versions of the posters
to work with, and I needed
to modify them so I wanted as much resolution as possible. I cracked open my Drew artbooks and scanned the posters myself. Some of them didn't fit the scanner so I had
to scan in segments and stitch them together afterwards. I also wanted the original, unaltered version of Drew's Ep.3 poster and that is nowhere
to be found online. It took me
a day (out of three working on this project), but in the end I had pristine, 600dpi scans of the posters
to sink my teeth into.
The challenge with the Drew posters is that they are formatted
to fit
a rectangular theatrical poster, which doesn't really fit the almost square front of
a Blu-Ray cover. I see
a lot of custom conversions of the Drew posters struggle with this, so I first had
to modify all six posters
to fit the proportions of Blu-Ray. Luckily, Drew included
a rectangular frame in all the posters' design, so I used that as
a starting point. I had
to cut off some ships and characters from the bottoms of all the posters, and move the bottom frame up. I formatted all six posters
to have an identical frame size, doing my best
to preserve as much of the original compositions as possible. (Lopping of the bottom third of all the posters throws them somewhat out of whack, the center being lost, but they still work.) I discovered that Drew had been somewhat inconsistent with the size of those frames, especially between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy posters, so that proved quite
a challenge.
To cap off the artwork and make it seem like it was originally finished at the bottom, I added
a gold frame. This frame also replaced all the different frames between the posters, thus making them more of
a unified whole.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, the Episode 3 poster does not have the same, obvious frame around it as the other posters do. Well, not the commercially released posters anyway. I had
to go back
to Drew's original version for Ep.3's poster, predating the hackjob the marketing gerbils did on it
to squeeze
a larger Darth Vader in there. Drew's version of the poster had the frame just fine.
Originally I was doing black covers for these, because black is the only single colour that goes with all six posters. The prequels are rendered in warm, golden tones while the original trilogy posters are colder. I found the black background
to be bland in the extreme, so I decided
to do
a textured, coloured background instead. I tried
to make all the covers crimson/gold, but ultimately I had
to split up the set in two sections using blue as
a background for eps. 4-6. I would have preferred them all
to be the same base colour since it brings all the spines together beautifully, but I wasn't going
to settle for black. No way.
For the background I used
a NASA still of
a Nova, tilted it on it's side and duplicated it back and front.
To give it some texture I overlaid
a leather texture image I googled. The Nova already had the red/golden hues I was looking for so I didn't need
to modify that for the prequels. For the OT, I shifted the hue and saturation of the Nova towards
a pale blue.
The one-sheets had
to be isolated from their background
to seamlessly fit on the covers. I used the colour-selection tool
to isolate most of the blacks, then touched up the finished mask by hand.
A lot of work, and I bet everyone takes it for granted. This removed Drew's signature for all the paintings, and I wanted
to retain that, so I isolated his signature from the Ep.4 poster and put it on
a separate layer from the artwork. That way it is consistent between all the posters. I found myself masking out most of Drew's paint-splatter stars, as they were conflicting with the stars from the Nova background, and frankly some of them just look like schmutz.
I mentioned
a reservation about these posters' greatness earlier, and
to me, the posters for Eps 1, 2 and 4 are just too hot, colourwise. It may just be in the way they are printed, but I toned down the redish skin on all of them. I still couldn't approximate anything approaching natural skin tones for Qui Gon on the first poster. I know it irks Drew when someone second guesses his choices (as would any artist) but I took that liberty. For Obi-Wan's lightsaber on the Ep.1 poster I replaced it with the one from the Ep.2 poster. It's still all Drew artwork, but that feeble, anemic, pointy lightsaber from the Ep.1 poster had
to go.
When making
a set, as opposed
to a single cover, I want
to remain as consistent between covers as possible. This poses certain challenges when the artwork on all is going
to be different. When placing the Star Wars logo on the front, I had
to find
a position that would remain the same across all covers, yet not obscure anything important on the different posters. I was largely successful, but poor Boba Fett got shafted on the Jedi cover. It just couldn't be helped. (Actually it could, I could have moved him
to a different part of the painting, but I am just too knackered
to perform that kind of precision surgery.)
The logo I opted for is one I first saw
a year or so back,
a slightly modernized version of the standard logo. I can't for the life of me find out who made it, but I see it used on the wallpaper sites everywhere. Anyone recognize it? It had
to be
a stacked version for the front,
a horizontal version would obscure too many elements on the posters. For the spine I split it up and modified the leg of the "R"
to follow the lines of the following "W". It's just
a small thing, but it seemed in keeping with the other letters. I redrew the entire logo with the same gold/brown I used for the poster borders. I put in some shadow and highlight effects by hand
to make it
a little richer looking. I used that same colour for other elements on the spine and back,
to tie the whole thing together.
For the actual titles of the films, I used
a sans-serif font
to complement the logo. It had
to be readable against the logo, so I used
a black glow effect
to make it stand out more. I use the glow effect
a lot when I need the text
to be legible against
a busy background. I find using
a glow is more flexible than
a standard stroke around the letters. The same font was then used for the text on the spines. Consistency is the word.
The roman numerals on the spine are rendered with the Emboss and Satin blending options from the layer pallette, as is the word "Episode". The titles themselves are so wordy, there's hardly room for much else on the spines.
The backs would be identical for all six, so once I established that template, it was just
a matter of plopping in the images in their assigned placement and size. I still struggle with the backs, so I made three versions of them before I was satisfied. They're still
a bit "boxy", and I am ambivalent about the gold frame I used, but it ties the back and front together so beautifully. The gold and crimson theme I used made the covers seem
a bit excessively ornamental, sort of like baroque art. This called for
a slightly elegant font for the specs (I believe I used Bangle, don't quote me on that because I can't be bothered opening the PSD files
to check). For the summary I used
a narrow sans-serif font ("TW Cent" something...)
to set it apart from the other text on the back. Typography doesn't come naturally
to me, so maybe these mixes clash
to a more trained eye. Let me know, OK?
BTW, where do you guys take the summary blurb from? I always use what's on the official releases, in this case the DVDs, and just add or subtract text
to fit my needs (and remove the worst spoilers). This is where typos creep in, so if there are any, do let me know. Good thing
a scan of the actual Blu-Ray back surfaced, so I could get the specs and running times right.
When choosing images for the back I wanted
to, like I always do, feature as many different characters as possible. I made
a point of including Jar-Jar for the first one. It's kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also that I feel sorry for the guy getting the short end of the stick from everyone. I like him just fine, and if there was room I'd have put him on the spine just
to spite the haters. That's also why the Ewoks are centered on the Jedi cover. Come on, who doesn't love the Ewoks? Really. I mixed some lesser known photos with the same, stale PR photos we've seen in every article about Star Wars for the last thirty years. Usually I'd avoid them like the plague, but that Falcon cockpit shot from ANH is pure nostalgia.
As always I used Illest Villains template for this, but for once I redid the legal copy
to reflect the actual Star Wars property. I added the artwork credit for Drew Stuzan, as well as
a Package Design credit for myself.
That's it. Took me three whole days.
A custom three-disc for the bonus discs is forthcoming, but for now this is all I have. If you appreciate these long write-ups for my covers, let me know. I enjoy writing about them just as much as making them. I'd love
to read about other designers' processes as well.
Okay, High Rez JPEGs of these are available by PM.
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