The city of 'Cliffhhold'

Actually more like the size of a small town, Cliffhold was an abandoned mining outpost on the planet Iego that had gambling casinos and bars for the typical outlander miner type. Some fans actually went thru the trouble of deciphering the Aurebesh on the towers and found the Vegas vendors. :) This was done in the early days of production when I was still using pen and ink drawings on paper. I brought it into Photoshop and gave it the enviroment.

The Carlac Yakoran Village

This village was to have a distinctive Asian feel to it even though it's an otherworldly planet.  The flags on the roofs are windmills with individual family identities and differing town purposes.

The first sketches were more typical and traditional looking but it's part of getting into the mindset of the original designs. The upward arching eaves are a characteristic of Asian architecture but I wanted the buildings to also have an alien yet practical look to them, hence the crystalline roofs and the geometric layout of the building itself.  I started to toy with idea that some of the houses have natural energy generators so I put the windmills on the top.  It also lent towards an unusual look.

I liked the ideas and so did the director so it was time to build in Maya.

Here are the main dwellings of the village in orthographic form for the overseas modelers.  Built in Maya and rendered in Photoshop.  I wanted the windmill sails to be similar to Japanese banners with simple symmetrical graphics to denote families or houses.

Larger secondary dwellings.

Tertiary structures.  Town Hall and an even larger dwelling.  For subliminal Star Wars vocabulary I incorporated 'moisture vaporators' as seen on Tatooine in the first movie except these are made of wood.

A plan view of the layout of the village.

The Underground Lava Rivers of Mortis

Here is where Anakin fights the dark side of the force represented by the 'Son' in the 'Alter of Mortis' 3 part series.  I designed the symbol in the foreground as the 'Yin' side of the Yin/ Yang of the Force, (if that analogy could be applied) where the light side symbol is within the dark symbol.  I thought it would be interesting to have giant stalagmites with molten lava pouring from them. The animation effect they ended up using turned out well.

The Trandoshan Slave Ship

The Trandoshan Slave Ship was an unused design by my friend Marc Gabbana on the prequels.  On 'Clone', GL gave it to us and I revised it for the show. In the story it's operated by several of the bounty hunter lizard guys first seen on the bridge of the 'Executor' chatting it up with Darth Vader in 'The Empire Strikes Back'. This design was used in the 3rd season story arc where Ahsoka gets captured and used as hunting fodder for the reptilians. Done with pencil, pen, and Photoshop.

Quick concept sketches. I preferred the second one myself.

The Bridge.

Instrument panel and seat details.

Bridge rear view.The shaft in the foreground leads to the chin turret:

Chin turret detail:

The Intersun Luxury Liner from Battlestar: Galactica

This was my lasting contribution to the 2004 reboot of Battlestar: Galactica. Ron Moore saw a little blue line sketch of the 'Luxury Liner' I did on the cover of my script and wanted me to develop it (among other things).  So from my little sketch I did a cleaner piece. Initially it was much more sleek and long with a much smaller 'garden' ring.

The production designer at the time thought the ring was too small so I enlarged it and shortened the fuselage.  I figured at some point in the future I could develop and detail the ship and give more panache but for the time being we were in a rush to get a presentation package together.

Kudos to the model builder who took my design and spruced it up a bit.

At some point they took the ship and detailed it up even more. It's chunkier and clunkier but it looks tough.

Ahsoka on trial

I had a good time designing this room.  Anything that harkens back to the original classic Star Wars and the fantastic set designs is always a pleasure to reproduce.  Here we have the 'Republic Military Base Hearing Room' where Ahsoka goes on trial. This angle is from the judges point of view.  The structure and design was done in Maya and the lights and panels in Photoshop.

Here's an establishing shot of the room from the opposite side.  You can see where the judge, jury, bailiffs, imperial technician's positions are.  The imperial symbol is above the judges chair with 2 large display screens bracketing it.  The seats behind the glass are for trial observers.  This is a huge set.

The Special Edition: The Art of Clone Wars

This box cover painting done for the 'Special Edition Art of Clone Wars' is an homage to Ralph McQuarrie's early poster concept for the first Star Wars movie. It was done on illustration board with cel vinyl and acrylic paints.  I used our 3d models to pose the characters for accuracy but I had to do the ships by eye. It pales in comparison to the master's piece. Ah well, one can only try. This painting is now in the hands of a private collector.

Ralph McQuarrie's painting for comparison:

Laser Bombers

My first aviation painting done in 1995 on illustration board with acrylic paints.  It's actual size is 22" X 35".  It's a depiction of F-4D Phantom 'Laser bomber's' over Vietnam. By this time in the war, the U.S. had developed precision bombs with a laser seeker head called LGB (Laser Guided Bomb) that could steer in on a laser illuminated target.  The 2 planes depicted here are from the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing from Ubon Royal Thai Airbase and are carrying the bombs but are not the illuminator. I've digitally scanned the painting and doing some work on it so that it can be enlarged to about twice the size and eventually printed as a poster. Hence some of the discrepancies here and there that I hope no one can see. It's awfully tough doing military stenciling accurately with a paintbrush.

Dooku's secret hideout on Coruscant

Now for some dark creepiness. The approach to Count Dooku's secret hideout on the planet of Coruscant.  Done in Maya and Photoshop for 'The Clone Wars' season 5.

Temporary post

Temporary post for just a few eyes than it's going down. Done in Photoshop.

Pyramid Power

The genius Dr. Patrick Flanagan was one of the first to self publish a book back in the early 70's called 'Pyramid Power'.  After working for the DoD and not producing a single weapon, he moved on to researching ancient technology and specifically the pyramids all over the earth.  After finding many amazing aspects to pyramid technology he wrote this book and it sold like hot cakes! It made him a millionaire several times over. He's going to reprint the book soon and I had the honor of doing the cover. The man at the center bottom of the composition is Pat. As with the pyramids of Giza, there are many, many messages in my composition. I'll describe them all soon! Painting was done in Photoshop.

Ball Turret Operator!

My biggest hero and inspiration is my father George.  When he was 18 years old he served in the Army Air Corps as a B.T.O. or ball turret operator on B-17's during WWII.  That's the ball with the big 50 caliber guns that is the main part of the composition. This painting was a long time coming but I finally finished it on his 87th birthday last year.  It's painted on a 2' X 5' canvas with acrylic paints. Not digital!  Done with real brushes, water, and high weave cotton. He loves it and currently hangs in the TV/ family room in their home.  More on this to come...

The New Horizon

Here's an elevation render from Maya with some Photoshop garnishes of the ship called the 'New Horizon' from the season 4 story arc, episodes 22 - 25 of  'The Clone Wars'.  This ship was both a school and bus (school bus) for the 'youngling Jedi'. During production George Lucas was set on making a spinoff series on the young Jedi tooling around a long time ago in a galaxy far far away in this ship.  Unfortunately, it was not to be.

It started off with with these simple design sketches in pen and ink. I like working in the 3/4 angle initially. They were scanned in digitally and I gave them a little tone in Photoshop so the director can see the shapes more easily.  In the beginning it's always about the finding the most harmonic shapes.  Also it has to have the 'vocabulary' of Star Wars design.  Just like 'Star Trek' has it's own 'vocabulary' of saucer bridges, nacelle engines, etc, so does Star Wars. Some of cues you see are 'Blockade Runner', 'Republic Frigate', and old Joe Johnstone designed engine configurations. 

The second one was chosen so I started building it in 3d.  We had to work fast! Here's the orthographic.

The final design model is completed. Scale is illustrated with the standard Clone Trooper. When assets were bigger and the Clone was harder to see we had to use the Republic Gunship as well. Initially the ship was a quarter larger than the final but it had to be reduced.  I would've like to detail the ship more but after a certain point, time to finish becomes critical.  Texturers can simulate detail with panel lines and panel color variation. So from this point I moved toward giving the ship a color scheme.

Star Wars is all about a "used universe" so the equipment has to have plenty of carbon scoring, chipped paint, and dirty fluid streaks. These screen captured angles of the ship are not the most dramatic, but they're necessary for the texturers so they can see every nook and cranny of the paint scheme.  A dramatic shot is not always the most informative.

1st Draft

This is a pre-production painting for a Dreamworks film. The protagonist is having a dream of hearing a jet nearby and jumps out of bed and out to the abandoned hanger to find this thing slowly coming towards him. It is a 'Nemo-esque' pilotless jet parking with the protagonists bathrobe flapping from the turbulent jet engines.  This painting was done 4 times with 4 different planes. This was the first iteration.

Reactor ship

This ship was designed and built for an online course that I've been working on called (strangely enough) 'Spaceship Design'.  I don't have a particular name for it right now.  I'm just calling it the 'Reactor' because of the cones that are in the 'X' configuration which I was attempting to denote as the main power source of the ship. Still in it's rough stages. More to come soon...