In November of 2017, The Star Wars tumblr page sponsored an art contest in conjunction with Vizio. The art work submitted had to directly tie in with "Star Wars: The Last Jedi", and be original art created for the contest.
Out of thousands of submissions, a small number of winners would be selected to have their art work displayed during the Red Carpet L.A. premiere of the Last Jedi in December 2017.
I was lucky enough to be one of those winners.
I would like to show you how this piece came to be.
Above is the final image as submitted to the contest. Before I could get to this stage, I had to find source material for the art.
That material came from the trailers and promo images for the movie. I simply took screen shots of the trailers/images and arranged a pleasing composition in Photoshop. That was just a starting point. That composition was then printed off and I created a pencil drawing from it by hand. (Daisy Ridely's face was VERY hard to see in the still I grabbed, and I had to redraw it 4 times-finally using reference from other stills to get it correct) This pencil drawing was then scanned into my computer, uploaded in Photoshop, and then I added layers of color under it.
Then, that image was printed off on an 11"x 14" pieceof bristol board. I then used a selection of colored pencils, and white gel pens to come up with the final composition and color by hand. This final image was then re-scanned and uploaded into Photoshop where final color/lighting/level corrections could be made and the Star Wars logo was added.
All that was left to do was submit my image. I later received word that my work had won!!! I was totally excited and couldn't wait till the evening of the red carpet premiere!!! During the premiere, I watched closely as the stars passed in front of the wall of screens by Vizio. There were a couple of shots I grabbed of Ram Bergman (producer), Frank Oz (Yoda), and one awesome picture of Anthony Daniels (C-3P0) and director Rian Johnson!!!
Needless to say, I was beyond ecstatic!!! The DIRECTOR of the movie, showcasing my art~!!! CRAZY!
BUT.... nothing compared with seeing Rey herself (Daisy Ridley) in front of my art...
So, that was my awesome experience. Thank for letting me share it with you!!!
I know I haven't posted in a long while (I'm a teacher, and a father and husband.. so time gets away from me.) But it's a new year and I am re-doing my schedule. So, hopefully, that means more posts and more art that I am sharing.
If you'd like to see more of my art, here are my links:
My Site
YouTube
InstaGram
Facebook
See you soon, and remember to be a creator- not just a consumer!!!