Between 1997 and 2002 I illustrated several Star Wars licensed publications and products. To this day I'm still a bit bewildered how that all came about but as a hardcore fan who grew up on the Original SW Trilogy it was a real career highlight.
In 1997 after completing a Batman coloring book assignment published by Golden Books, I was then offered my first Star Wars projects. An 84 page Star Wars themed Mad Libs activity book and a possible kids coloring book. Both themed around the Original Trilogy. I had completed work on the Mad Libs book and created design submissions for the coloring book when at the end of the year Golden Books lost out on the bidding renewal for the Star Wars license to Random House. All Star Wars planned projects were dropped and my Mad Libs book was never published. A sampling of that art for those project are seen here at the end of this gallery.
Fortunately my work on those dropped projects got noticed by a publishing editor at Lucasfilm. So in the Spring of 1998 I found myself invited to Skywalker Ranch to interview with the art director of Lucasfilm Licensing. They were looking for artists to work on the licensing bible for Episode 1: The Phantom Menace which was still a year away from release. I passed the security inquiry and was assigned to illustrate logos, crests, frames and other decorative icons themed off various props, costumes and vehicles seen in the film. The illustrations were included in the licensing bible and any vendor producing Episode 1 merchandise could utilize such art. So my icons appeared on all kinds of Star Wars products such as toothbrushes, school supplies, toy packaging and countless books.
I then worked on an assignment for the Star Wars Insider magazine featuring profiles of the characters found within the Star Wars novel series titled The NEW JEDI ORDER.
After The Phantom Menace film was released I did a lot of work for Wizards of the Coast. They were re-launching the Star Wars Roll Playing Game system and needed artists for their new products and magazines. I created spot illustrations for several of their books and publications over this period of time.
This included a special promotional comic book in partnership with Dark Horse Comics featuring new Star Wars RPG characters designed by comic artist Adam Hughes (who also drew the comic cover shown here). I penciled all the comic art and additionally designed a few new generic Star Wars universe characters that were sculpted into miniature figurines used in this game system.