I saw my first Star War in a theater at age twelve. It was Return of the Jedi. I immediately became obsessed, mostly with all the vehicles. Those speeder bikes!
During those summers I would spend days at my dad’s machine shop in Williamsburg, Ohio. Mom did accounting in the office and I would putter around and try and stay out of everyone’s hair.
They let me use the photocopier—within reason—and that led to my first commercial art and entrepreneurial experience.
I drew a collage of all the major characters from Return of the Jedi, complete with logotype treatment of the movie title in black and white and made a bunch of photocopies. I’d take those prints and color them in by hand.
Then I set up a table outside the shop with my wares and tried to sell ’em. I sold one, maybe two? I’m sure my parents put friends up to it. I took the money from the sale and went up the street to the ice cream place and got a soft serve cone.
I tried to find one of these drawings or a copy to no avail. Seriously, I’ve been through about 6 boxes in storage and gone down so many rabbit holes. One path led me to a box of toys and the image below.
How’s all that for a tangent?!
Fast forward many years and I still love this silly space cowboy show. (Let’s ignore the prequels for the moment.) I loved The Force Awakens and thought The Last Jedi was excellent. So I was pretty excited for this “last” installment of the Skywalker saga.
It was a sprawling, dense, visually thrilling, hoot. Spoiler with my favorite part? (You’ve been warned.) Chewy’s moment at the end. Totally ridiculous and lovely.
One last tangent. When I got a toy Jabba the Hut back in 1983, it looked very different than what was on the box. The color was all wrong. He was… ochre.
So I painted it.
Don’t believe the ochre? Check out the first image on this comparison of Jabba toys over the years. (Now that’s dedication.)
Nope, one more tangent! What up, movie posters?