Stay On Target...

My latest project has been a series of famous Star Wars posters and other Star Wars related items that I've donated to a great cause.  My understanding is that the episode of the tv show that these are part of won't air until next year, but in the meantime here's what I did!

I spoke with the folks at CarveWright on the phone..."They really liked your movie posters you carved awhile back".  I was already way ahead of him.  Star Wars posters were something I wanted to recreate almost as soon as I got my CarveWright 4 or 5 years ago.  In my mind I thought "Awesome!" and then immediately "Uh Oh...I got a bad feeling about this."

You see, the process of converting an image into something you can carve dimensionally isn't as easy as you'd like.  You can't just import the image and carve it. Further, the folks at Lucasfilm protect their copyright vigorously and I didn't want stormtroopers showing up at my shop.  Thank goodness this project was already approved by Lucasfilm!

Here's the rub- If you have a person with dark hair..the face stays high, while the hair becomes carved very deep.  I'd run into this and found that if I was willing to put a great deal of time into modifying the image in photoshop, I could get something I could carve.  To be honest, the paintjob did the work of making it look good. My carvings were "so-so" at best.  So here I was saying "Yeah! The original Star Wars poster would be a cool one to do for them!" Oh boy.

I knew I had about a day to figure it out, while waiting for the carving material to arrive. I figured out that I better solve the problem and fast.  These things had to go out in 3 days!

The solution came as part of a backup plan.  I took the poster image and vectored (created lines) around each of the objects in the poster.  I figured that if nothing else, I could have varying layers and each would become a mini-canvas for the painting.  Not ideal, but I knew it would work if it had to.

I imported this new image into the carving software and then had an idea. What if I combined it with the original scan and added the two together? The result was exactly what I'd hoped. My problems were solved!

Now it was a relatively simple matter to create files for the other 2 posters and carve them as well!

I also felt that I wanted to do more than just send copies of existing posters (albeit with some modifications I decided to make).  I came up with the idea of doing a "filmstrip" that I could make from Azek and heat up and bend into a nice "s-curve".

Now it was on to paint!  The first poster clearly had the most detail, and I knew it would take the most time, so I began on it early and worked on it off and on for the 3 days I had until I had to ship the project. All of the pieces were primed and textured...with a little less texture on the people/droids.
Then base coats of black paint.  I then charted some unknown territory for me and decided that some of the pieces really called for airbrush.  It was time to get a decent one and I started with an Iwata HP-BCS.  Knowing very little about airbrushing, I can tell you it's the best I've ever used. Unfortunately, this isn't saying much. I hooked it up, and started painting. Instructions? No time.

Next I began to alternate airbrush and hand painting.  The reference photos were great and the process taught me a great deal.

In a short time, I was looking at my own dimensional version of the first poster!

I made some small changes, like adding gold to C3PO and some blue to R2D2 (the original art treated them mostly in off whites and darks).  I also added the more well known version of the star wars logo (the original is pretty different!). Soon I was done and ready to move on to the rest!

Stay tuned for more! The empire is preparing to strike back!