TheForce.net Experience

Wow.

This one definitely came as a surprise! The folks over at TheForce.net were kind enough to contact me a few weeks ago in regards to a project they needed some help with. They asked for me to submit some rough sketches for a banner, to be used both on their homepage site for a short time, and as a huge, 8 ft. x 4 ft. (although my art would only be 4 ft. wide) printed banner at their table at Celebration V.

For those unfamiliar with Celebration V, it's the Lucasfilm-hosted Star Wars convention (in Orlando this time) that happens every 2 years, and this is the 5th one! This. Is a big. Deal. Lucasfilm always makes sure there's crazy big events going on at this thing, and there's ALWAYS a truckload to see. Plus, it's been announced that George Lucas himself will be visiting this one!

So anyway, they needed an Empire Strikes Back themed banner (as it's the 30th Anniversary this year) and would like it presented in that Clone Wars style of art that I love so much. That's why they came to me!

I immediately got to work and busted out the best proposal I could, including 8 digital sketches (4 of them crudely colored, to give them a rough idea of how I think in the early stages), in addition to some character design. Early yesterday morning, they not only confirmed they would like me to do the banner, but they've already selected the scene of the 8 submitted ideas that they wanted. ALSO, they asked me to submit two of the other ones as submissions for the contest to choose what badges would be worn at Celebration V for all the forum members and staff of TheForce.net! Finally, to top it all off, they said that once the banner is completed, they're going to write an article about me doing the banner work, and link my DeviantArt, my soon-to-be-launched website, AND this blog!

And do you know how all of this this came about? Because, just like Katie Cook suggested (see the post 2 fridays ago!), I posted my work in their fanart forums. Imagine that!! This is a great chance for me to gain some exposure to fellow fans AND to the Star Wars art community that I've so far been unable to reach out to.

Now, I'm not sure if I'm going to be allowed to show it to you folks until TheForce.net announces it (I believe it will technically belong to them), but I can definitely show off the badge submissions I do (which will be separate illustrations).

Without further delay, here are the initial rough sketches presented to those folks when they were considering me for the job. They chose the last one, Frozen Han in the Carbon Freezing Chamber. =) WISH ME LUCK!!

UPDATE:
Had to remove the preview image just to be safe! Want to keep the clients happy! Don't worry though, once they reveal the final banner, I'll have that back up here!