Ralph McQuarrie is an American conceptual designer who is most notably famous for his outstanding concept art for the original Star Wars trilogy. I love how McQuarrie uses a vast colour pallet to create dynamic vehicles and scenery. As I am currently doing a project related to Sci-Fi I thought he was the perfect artist to research and take inspiration from.
McQuarrie was born June 13th 1929 and lived a very successful life until he died in 2012 aged 82. George Lucas had made the original Star Wars script and instantly went to McQuarrie to visualise all the characters, vehicles and planets he had wrote about. He also provided concept art for Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire; which was a video game/comic series. Branching away from Star Wars he also illustrated the Ark of the Covenant seen in a Bible near the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Much of Ralph McQuarrie's work was made exactly how he drew them however there are some exceptions of character designs that were changed for the films. I love how McQuarrie manages to capture such otherworldly designs in his art and I would like to reflect that in my work. In my recent concept art work I have tried to emulate his extraordinary background detail.
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