Steampunk Star Wars: Lady Leia, Princess of Alderaan

Lady Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan

Alderaan's Princess and ambassador to a number of planets, Lady Leia's fiery, confident personality and sharp intellect made her a very strong and influential diplomat extremely critical of Imperial policies. Her speeches and public image were instrumental in generating sympathy for the rebel cause. Using her diplomatic connections to gain access to highly guarded information and smuggle supplies, she was an integral member of the Resistance.

As a member of Alderaan's royal family, Leia grew up in the lap of luxury. During her childhood she was widely adored as a public darling, famous for her curly hair and her performances of the Alderaan Global Anthem at royal events. She was a powerful symbol of hope and optimism in a troubled time. However, as a teenager she suddenly withdrew from the public spotlight and began studying at a private school. This withdrawal coincided with the unprecedented government censorship of a popular musical (Gilbert & Snootles' HMS Executor, a comic opera that was highly critical of the Empire), an act which drew much ire from the people of Alderaan, who saw it as the royal family allowing the Empire to meddle in Alderaanian affairs.

When she turned 17, Leia joined the Alderaanian military. (Although the royal family was not technically exempt from Alderaan's mandatory year of military service, Leia was the first princess in over 400 years to actually serve her time.) After two years in the service, she had become an adept marksman and had even led a number of peacekeeping missions in Rodian territories. It is believed that it was during this time that she joined the Resistance, and may have even had a hand in organizing it into the significant force it became.

Steampunk Star Wars: Captain Ackbar

I've finally got something new to show for Steampunk Star Wars. This was just a quicky, but hopefully it'll help me get back into the groove. There's some characters I'd still really like to do.

Oh, but first, check this out. Three great tastes that go so well together: Steampunk, Star Wars, and Lego!


Captain Ackbar

A scientific genius with a troubled mind, Captain Ackbar spent much of his life roaming the stars in a ship of his own design. After witnessing his homeworld captured and his people enslaved by the Empire, he gathered a loyal crew and fled into deep space, planning to escape civilization entirely.

For the next sixteen years, not a trace of Ackbar or his crew was seen. Meanwhile, the Empire continued to spread, and soon even the darkest corners of the galaxy would hold no sanctuary for Ackbar. Then, as suddenly as he disappeared, a surprise attack on a vital Imperial supply ship signaled Ackbar's return, and the beginning of a long and impressive guerrilla campaign against the Empire. Like a phantom, Ackbar and his ship haunted the Empire, swooping in and hitting them whenever and wherever they were most vulnerable, then disappearing into the void without a trace. The stories of his deeds made him a folk hero among resistance supporters and a fearsome figure to Imperial Stormtroops.

After the annihilation of Alderaan, Ackbar ended his lone campaign and officially joined forces with the Resistance.

Album Covers

Here's a fun little meme by way of Dubious Quality.

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days is your album cover.

Using that formula, I came up with the following:







Try it yourself, it's fun!

More album covers from Dubious Quality: 1, 2

Last Man Standing: Underneath It All

Sorry for neglecting this place for so long. No excuses, I've just been lazy about keeping this place updated. There's some other stuff I'll be posting soon, but I don't expect you to believe me when I say that anymore.

Anyway! You should all go check out Round 1 of the 3rd Last Man Standing competition over at ConceptArt.org. Tons of mindblowingly awesome art by over 300 artists, including a piece by me.

Matches 1-24
Matches 25-48 (I'm in Match 42)
Matches 49-72

The theme for this round was "Underneath It All". I was against some really tough competition so I made something that I thought would really stand out.

Here's my entry:

Click it!

Cowgirl

I don't know why I keep drawing cowboys (or in this case, cowgirls), I don't even particularly like westerns. There's just something about the cowboy aesthetic that appeals to me. I think it's the revolver. I'm not a big fan of guns, but the revolver is one sexy piece of machinery. Modern guns hide their moving parts, while the revolver shows off its elegant mechanisms.



I think this might be the same character as the girl in this piece, but I can't be sure.

Art dump!

Hey guys! Sorry about the lack of updates, I guess I haven't had much of interest to show or say lately. I thought I'd dump a few pieces of art I've done lately.


Brother Hogarth
Prefers dogs to people. Loves anything pineapple flavoured. Scared of the dark.


Painted from reference.


And lastly, a giant robot city! In retrospect, probably somewhat inspired by Metroplex.

Hopefully it won't be as long between this post and the next.

Other artists taking on Steampunk Star Wars

This is so cool! Over at CGTalk, there's a whole thread of artists making their own take on the Steampunk Star Wars theme. There's some fantastic work in there, especially on the later pages. If nothing else, check out Marcel "System404" Mercado's stuff on pages 4 and 5. His R2-D2 is great.

Link

Update, Excuses, Etc

Hey guys!

I know it's been a while since I last updated. I haven't been doing much personal art lately, I've been catching up on some games mostly. I finally played through Fallout 2, which I've been meaning to do for years. Fantastic game, and I can't wait to see what Bethesda does with Fallout 3 (the teaser for which is coming tomorrow!). I know there are a lot of people skeptical of Bethesda taking on the license, but there's no other developer I'd trust with it as much as them.

I've also been playing Final Fantasy XII, which I'm enjoying. Art-wise, it's incredibly coherent and imaginative. The last few games in the series have been a little mish-mashy with the art style, but FFXII's is really well put together. Definitely the best art direction for the series since FFVI. As for the gameplay, I'm really excited they're experimenting more. I like the Gambit system, but I'm still not sold on the License Board.

I'm still working on some new Steampunk Star Wars stuff. I was working on one image (the one I posted a teaser of), but I started feeling like I was spinning my wheels with it. I kept working on it but it didn't feel like I was getting anywhere, so I put it aside for the time being and started a different character. I hope that one will be done pretty soon!

And just so I don't look like a total slacker, here's a picture I painted on the weekend!

Art dump

Here are a few random sketches and speedpaints I've done over the last few months that I haven't gotten around to posting before.

Geek Monthly Magazine

This month I was interviewed by Bonnie Burton for Geek Monthly magazine. Go buy it! I'm reading through the rest of the magazine now and it's definitely worth checking out.

It's funny, in the interview I mention how cool it would be for someone to do a viking version of Star Wars, so afterwards I went to see if someone actually had done Viking Star Wars. Turns out that not only had someone made a Viking Lightsaber, but it was the same guy who made the Steampunk Lightsaber that originally inspired my Steampunk Star Wars art! Guy keeps stealing my ideas before I have them!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention, my art was also used in the latest issue of SFX magazine. I haven't seen it, but apparently it's on page 24. If you're in the UK, pick it up!

New Prints

I've got some new prints up on my DeviantArt store. Now, to the untrained eye these may look identical to my Steampunk Star Wars images, but they are in fact of entirely unrelated characters that have nothing to do with Star Wars whatsoever. I hold no responsibility for anyone who orders one of these hoping to get a really sweet picture of Han Solo & Mr. Chewbacca and is disappointed to receive an image of an unnamed, wholly original but still pretty sweet steampunk space smuggler and his furry partner. You could still hang it on your wall and tell all your friends that it's a picture of Han Solo & Mr. Chewbacca if you like. They won't know the difference, I swear. Oh, you probably shouldn't tell your friend that if they work for DeviantArt Prints. If that's the case, you can just make up some names for them (may I suggest Jasper and Chompie!)

If anyone orders one, let me know how they look!

Just a general update...

Hey guys!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been busy with other work and haven't had much time to work on Steampunk Star Wars or other personal work. But there's new stuff coming, I swear. Here, I'll prove it with a teaser!



So, what else has been going on? My car got broken into yesterday. They left a nice dent in my door and stole 20 or 30 CDs from my glove box. Nothing irreplacable, but it's still a hell of a bummer. Ah well, at least they didn't break a window or steal the car.

I have a new favourite blog! Paleo-future, which looks at the predictions about the future from the past. This is getting linked to all over. It's great seeing how people of the past thought we would be living today. Even predictions from ten years ago tend to be quite inaccurate. Looking through all the different predictions from different time periods, you can see a lot of common mistakes they tend to share. Even when they correctly predict the direction of technology, they almost always completely fail to predict the cultural and social changes that go along with them. People seem to assume their grandchildren will be exactly like them, just with new toys.
Some of my favourite posts:
What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years (Ladies Home Journal, 1900
Suprisingly accurate in some respects, very naive in others. I like the way they casually predict the extinction of all wildlife, and their seeming obsession with pneumatic tubes. Not only that, but they predict automobiles with one or maybe even two horsepower!
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
The future, as AT&T would like it. My favourite is part 3, where the kid plays a terribly designed virtual reality game with his friends.
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
GIANT ROBOTS! YEAH!

Makes you wonder what assumptions we have about the future following generations are going to laugh at. Are hydrogen fuel cells the new pneumatic tubes? And what technologies and cultural developments are we severely underestimating?

Prints Now Available!

I've finally got some prints available for sale through DeviantArt Prints. I've never used them personally, so I don't have first hand knowledge of the quality, but I've heard good things from friends.

I'm putting the Steampunk Star Wars series up for now. I've seen a fair bit of Star Wars fan art for sale, so I don't think selling these will be a problem.

Purchase Prints Here

Although some pieces are available at larger sizes, the best quality prints will probably be around the 10-12 inches or lower size.

If there's a piece of mine you'd like to purchase a print of and it's not in the store, let me know!

UPDATE: New Prints available!

Actual Steampunk Star Wars!

I-Wei Huang (aka. Crabfu), maker of many steam-powered robots you may have seen in the past, has gone and brought his own version of steampunk Star Wars to life with this totally awesome actual steam-powered R2-D2! The brass and wood accents are a great touch.

If you haven't seen his work before, I suggest you check it out.


As seen on Brass Goggles.

Speedpaint video

Hey guys, no new Steampunk Star Wars stuff yet. But in the meantime, I recorded myself doing a quick speedpaint. It's not the greatest painting ever, but I thought it might be interesting to show how I work.



At the original speed, this took 23 minutes.

For speedpaints like this, I generally have no idea whatsoever what I'm going to be drawing when I start. I just start scribbling until I see some shapes I like. This is a different method than I use for something like my Steampunk Star Wars images, where I have some idea of what I want to draw.

It's hard painting while recording it. It's like painting for an audience, I start to get self-conscious about every little mark. But it's cool being able to watch it back and be able to spot my bad habits. Also, when I speed it up 6x like this it makes it really look like I know what I'm doing!

Steampunk Star Wars: Sir Obi Wan Kenobi

Sir Obi Wan Kenobi

As a young man in the days of the Republic, Sir Obi Wan Kenobi was an agent for the Jedi League of Force Champions. He is intimately acquainted with the dark side of the force, as he spent nearly a decade undercover within the Sith Brotherhood, secretly trying to uncover the identity of the organization's Patriarch. His time on the dark side left permanent scars upon his soul and to this day he battles the temptation to indulge his darker emotions.

When his identity was compromised and he was forced to escape the Sith Brotherhood, Obi Wan returned to the Jedi League. Many years of service later, he was chosen to mentor a new agent to continue his undercover work: a young boy named Anakin, groomed by the League especially for this role. Obi Wan spent many years raising and training the boy, but when the time came for Anakin to infiltrate the Brotherhood he was overwhelmed and seduced by the power it offered him. He ultimately betrayed Obi Wan and the League, forcing Obi Wan to kill him. Whatever remained of Anakin after that battle became the creature known as Lord Vader.

Obi Wan has spent the last twenty years living as a hermit on Tatooine, hidden from the Empire, studying the secrets of the Force and keeping watch over a child he swore an oath to protect.

Steampunk Star Wars Desktops

Just a quick update. I resized each of the Steampunk Star Wars images to the proper dimensions for anyone who wants to use them as their desktop. They're all at 1280x960, so you should be able to use them at almost any resolution without stretching. Enjoy!

Steampunk Star Wars: Death Star

Massive Solar-Orbiting Electro-Mechanical Analytic Engine, Mark 6

This enormous Imperial space station, the size of a small moon or asteroid, is in fact an immense analytic engine, a device capable of making millions of calculations every day. Inside is kilometer after kilometer of tubes and wheels, cranks and gears, all spinning and clacking, spitting out an endless series of numbers for the Imperials scientists to decipher.

Although the Empire has half a dozen such devices in operation throughout the galaxy, this version is unique. While the others spend their days crunching statistical algorithms or calculating flight models, the Mark 6 station (under the personal watch of Lord Vader) is dedicated to experiments with Arcane Mathematics, the mathematical study of the Force. They hope to discover a unified Force theory, allowing them to fuse the power of the Force with their technology to create unspeakably powerful weapons. The station already houses a product of this research, a terrible weapon capable of directing a coherent beam of pure Force energy¹, strong enough to destroy all life on an entire planet. This weapon has earned the station the nickname of "Death Star".

[1]As it has not yet been discovered a way for machines to directly generate Force energy, it must be supplied by a powerful Force user. The user conjures the energy inside of a specially designed resonance chamber which amplifies the energy before directing it through a series of lenses to produce a powerful coherent beam of unimaginably destructive energy.

Stereotypes in Character Design

Hey guys, no new art to show just yet. Had to take it a bit slower this weekend due to my wrist acting up, but new stuff is coming, including a cool collaborative project I think you'll like.

Over at the Story-games.com forum, a few people criticised my illustration of Jabba the Hutt as being a racist Asian stereotype. As much as I hate to admit it, they're right. Like a lot of art criticisms, it's something I didn't notice myself, but once it was pointed out it seems so obvious, and now it's all I can see every time I look at it.

Now, I obviously never intended it to be a racist stereotype. Like I say in that thread, my intention wasn't to depict Jabba as an exotic, foreign villain based on Asian stereotypes, it was to depict him as a villain that flaunts his wealth by dressing himself and his palace with exotic, foreign items. Unfortunately, I missed the mark and ended up with Ming the Merciless as a slug. My intentions weren't racist, but intentions are largely irrelevant when it comes to illustration. The art should communicate everything you meant it to, and not require excuses.

This is an important lesson for any artist, writer or designer. When one is working, it's easy to focus too hard on how nice a piece looks and lose sight of what exactly it's communicating. You have to be critical of your work on all levels. Sure, that Fu Manchu mustache may look cool and totally make him look like a catfish, but it also carries other connotations that the artist needs to be aware of.

So consider my Jabba illustration a work in progress. I was already unhappy with it for other reasons, and in light of this I think it would be a good idea to redo it sometime. But later, after I've done some new designs.

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Oh yeah, I've also received a lot of people expressing interest in buying prints of my work. I'm currently looking into getting prints of some of my art for sale, but I don't think the Steampunk Star Wars series will be included in that. You know, copyright issues and all.

Talk to you guys again soon!

A brief moment of seriousness

Glen (aka Gangus) at ConceptArt.org, an artist I greatly admire, has a 2-year old son named Ted. Ted was recently diagnosed with autism, and is currently in a very long line waiting for the government aid needed for him to get treatment. The longer he has to wait, the less chance he'll have that the therapy will be effective. You can help Ted and others like him by going to the link below, reading his story and showing your support.

Help Ted



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When you're done with that, you can go here to check out some more of Gangus' art. This is his Victory Gals series, a number of paintings inspired by the pin-up nose art on World War 2 planes. Very cool stuff.