Main |
Galactic News
Friday October 19, 2001
Homing Beacon #46
The latest Homing Beacon has arrived! Though the frames containing Brandon McKinney's art may be compact, the dozens of images the Northern California-based illustrator fills them with describe vast scenes of epic proportions. McKinney is the artist of The Mighty Chronicle series: thick yet tiny storybooks published by Chronicle Books adapting the Star Wars films. He is currently wrapping up work on the Attack of the Clones adaptation, to be published upon the movie's release next year.
There are anywhere from 120 to 150 illustrations in each book, says McKinney. For Episode II, I've roughed out 150 or so, and we're going to use about 130 of them. We had to pull some because of how small the book is going to be. I'm just inking those up right now, so I'm just a couple of weeks from finishing.
Being based in the Bay Area is a boon for McKinney, who visits Skywalker Ranch on a weekly basis, putting him in the heart of Episode II's production. It's a privilege, he says. If I lived out on the east coast, I wouldn't get to be here and see the new stuff come rolling in, and see it all get put together, and that's really exciting. And I can brag to my friends that I got to go to the Ranch today.
McKinney joins the ranks of such notable artist as Dark Horse's Jan Duursema in adapting the entire story of Episode II into artwork. For a movie still in the making, this calls upon an artist's flexibility and imagination to manage the often-incomplete information on the evolving subject matter.
For this book, I started working at the end of July. I first watched a slideshow presentation of a synopsis of the story. I got to read one of the versions of the script, and Lucasfilm gave me access to images for reference, says McKinney. It's tricky, because if a shot is completely computer-generated --- like the Gungan battle in Episode I -- I just have to make up the final shot in my head. While I'm working on this book, ILM is putting the shots together. It's basically me reading the script and getting reference for the characters and reference for the background, and putting them in the action that the story calls for. It's kind of fun, because I feel like I get to do my own version of certain shots in the movie. It will be interesting to actually see the movie and see how close I got them.
Being able to touch elements from the entire movie, McKinney quickly latched onto favorite characters and scenes. Jango Fett is awesome, he says, a sentiment shared by many artists working on adaptations. I like doing characters with expressions, but Fett's costume looks so cool, it's one big expression in and of itself.
An appreciation for the saga's momentous events depicted in Episode II made some of the more difficult drawing tasks easier. McKinney points to one particular frame that stood out as a chore. There's thousands and thousands of tiny figures in this one picture. That's a little nerve-wracking. The concept of the sequence is awesome; it's just the rendering of it that gets a little tough.
McKinney notes that the size of his illustrations -- about two-by-three inches when printed -- often presents a challenge when depicting scenes of immense scope. But for one of the largest sequences in Episode II, all the pieces fell into place. I found it almost the easiest once I got all the reference. The trick was getting a hold of all that stuff. Once I got everything together, it was really fun. It's an image I've always dreamed about seeing.
Conversely, the printed size works in favor of the film's more intimate scenes. I really liked the personal stuff between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé; the beautifully lit scenes with beautiful backgrounds and beautiful settings. I liked going from the cool action stuff to the quieter, more emotional stuff.