Star Wars art bible

This project is intended to show off my character design, environmental design and concept art skills. I have chosen to focus on a Star Wars-based project because the worldbuilding of this universe is incredibly vast and allowing for so many stories to take place at the same time, but also because I am a huge sci-fi nerd and working on a Star Wars game is my dream job. I am taking a more stylized approach, think of a Jedi Fallen Order-like game but in a style similar of Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, Rebels etc.

The main program I will use is:

I plan on designing the following characters, props and environments:

Twi'lek female (main character)
Mon Calamari female (main antagonist)
Mirialan male (side character)
Bounty Hunter droid
Blasters
Kyber crystal rifle / lightsaber rifle
Spaceships
Floating islands Rebel base and the flora and fauna belonging to it and the native humanoids living there
UI

Chapter breakdown

For each character:

Turnaround sheet
Expression sheet
Color palettes
Scale reference

For the alien humanoids:

For the planet design:

Week 2

Main Character Concept + Final Turnaround

For this character I'm looking for a gunslinger vibe, opposed to the Jedi character most Star Wars games and stories have in the spotlight.

She is a rebel spy, tasked with gathering as much imperial plans and information as possible.

Why did I choose to make her a Twi'lek? Because they're the most common species in the galaxy, therefore making it a lot easier for her to sneak around, go unnoticed and just blend into the background.

Her name is Ovasu Nolaa and is originally from the Outer Rim planet, Ryloth. One notable thing about her is that she lost one of her head tails -the lekku- in a face-off with possibly an inquisitor and is now wearing a metallic prosthetic. It's only role is to help balance out the weight on either side of her head and no aesthetic use. She does feel self-conscious about it, especially because her species' language, Ryl, uses both words and lekku movement. Now that she has a missing head tail, she can't properly speak her native language and feels disconnected from her roots and people.

Week 3

Side character - Mirialan male

Aesthetically, I want this character to give off Nathan Drake vibes. After Order 66, he swore to himself he will do everything in his power to protect as many Jedi artifacts as he can, so he ends up becoming a thief / scavenger, stealing Jedi artifacts before the Empire can get their hands on them. I have 4 skin color variations in mind for him and I will decide on a final color once I have his entire design finished. For his lightsaber, I'm thinking of having it cyan, to represet the fact that he can fight using both the Jedi ways, but also guns, fists etc.

Main Antagonist - Mon Calamari Female

Week 4: FMP Pre-Vis + some Ovasu expressions

Week 5

This week I focused on working on the design and turnaround of the Mon Calamari character. After receiving my feedback for the pre-vis presentation, I decided to show more of my thought process and the progression of my designs. With this in mind, I started out by sketching out a couple of outfit variations and had my friends, classmates and instagram followers vote on which one is their favourite and give suggestions of what they would change or improve. Down below are the sketches they were shown:

These are the results and feedback:

So uniform 2 won with 16 votes! Here are some changes I made to it based on feedback I got and personal preference:

changed her cape to a coat instead
added knee height boots

Week 6 - Mirialan character

I developed the Mirialan's backstory a bit more and will fit some elements of it in his design. But first off, now he has a name: Shazu Uwuba.

Shazu used to be a padawan before Order 66 and had 2 masters. His first master, whom he got along the most and was training under for most of his padawan years, was summoned to become a Jedi Temple Guard, one of the most honorable jobs according to Star Wars lore. This made the young padawan idolize his master even more. Because of this change, he was assigned a new master to train under. Not shortly after, Order 66 happened and his 2nd master was killed trying to fight off the clones. His first master abandoned his Temple Guard duties to save Shazu, sacrificing himself for the padawan to live. In that moment, Shazu swore to himself he will carry on his master's duties as best as he can. He lived in hiding before deciding to join the Rebelion and was assigned to Ovasu's squad.

Together, both of them crash on the floating island planet and with the help of the natives, make a Rebel outpost there. Shazu discovers an ancient, abandoned Jedi Temple, which helps him decide it's time to honor his promise and starts stealing Jedi artefacts so that the Empire can't find them.

I want his design to include some of the elements present in the Temple Guards' uniforms, but also give hints that he's a scavenger / thief.

I think his first design is very simple and doesn't really include Jedi elements. His 2nd design is somewhat more balanced and the one I'm leaning towards the most at the moment.

Meanwhile, his 3rd design might be too much Temple Guard in my opinion. The cloak could help with keeping his face hidden and make stealing stuff easier, but I need to keep in mind his outfit needs to be light, in order to sneak easily and do parkour (kind of like Nathan Drake), but still needs something like a couple of pouches.

Week 7

This week I was kind of lazy, not gonna lie. I was starting to feel really burned out from doing the character turnarounds and missed drawing full illustrations or even just sketching. So I decided to take it easy this week as to avoid an even bigger burn-out and art block.

One of the first things I started working on was a key moment in Ovasu's story, namely when she lost her lekku in a TIE fighter crash, her cover blown and stranded on a mysterious planet.

It took me a while to render the background, so I started thinking if I should give up on the environment design bit of the project, which I had no previous experience in, and focus more on character, which I', quite experienced in, but I wasn't 100% sure yet.

After that I decided to work on a "personality pose" for Ovasu's expression sheet.

Another thing I worked on was trying to come up with a way to present and put together my work for a portfolio review with Troy Alders for Star Wars Celebration 2023. I decided to go with this format found on my artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xD3YXR

Week 8 + Easter Holiday

Star Wars Celebration 2023 week was a great source of inspiration for me! Being surrounded by so many props (some of them lifescale too!), cosplayers, artists and creators helped me with my lack of motivation, especially over the holidays.

This week I officially decided to cut everything that included designing an environment, but added 2 more characters in the lineup to make up for it. These characters are a pair of Zabrak Mandalorian twins, with armours heavily based on the Crystal foxes from The Last Jedi, the Vupltices. Their clan has them as their symbol and almost kind of worship them, considering them their protectors and therefore having their armours heavily based on them.

I only did a simple sketch of the characters' heads this week, still feeling very burned out from turnarounds.

Week 9

Back to working on turnarounds! Not too much tho. Dealing with artblocks when you have a deadline just around the corner is really stressfull and surprisingly, makes you even less determided to actually do work. So this week all I did was finish the front design of Shazu, the Mirialan character I'm designing, while focusing on catching up on other assignments.

I am currenly debating between these 2 color schemes for him.

Week 10

Now that I finished Shazu's design, it's time to work on his lightsaber. His lightsaber used to belong to his master that was turned into a Jedi Temple Guard. He gave it to him just before he died so that Shazu could protect himself when the empire would eventually come for him.

For this design I was really inspired by evil Rey's lightsaber design in The Rise of Skywalker. After doing some more research on it, I found out that it was actually a recycled design from the clone wars show. It turns out this type of lightsaber is exactly what the Jedi Temple Guards used, which makes it fit even better with Shazu's story. I still wanted to make it original, so I decided to add some engraving to it, as the design I came up with seemed really bland and empty. Down below are some pictures that inspired me in designing this lightsaber.

Down below is my final design. I incorporated some kind of engraving to it which people told me looks like it's straight from the High Republic era. Having in mind that this project takes place during the Original Trilogy timeline, I got an idea of how I could make it work without changing the design. Since he is basically some sort of scavenger or treasure hunter, he would upgrade the lightsaber with pieces he finds in the Jedi Temples he's exploring, some of which could date back to the High Republic.

Lastly, this week I worked on a couple of expressions for him. I based his entire personality on Flyn Rider from Tangled and Nathan Drake from Uncharted. He is the kind of person that will use his charisma to bury his actual trauma from Order 66 deep down. He has this entire fake persona, but with the right people, he will show his true colors. He doesn't trust very easily and mosly works solo, that is until he is assigned by the Rebellion to assist Ovasu in her mission.

Week 11

Following up on the work I did for Shazu last week, this week I worked on his personality pose. I wanted it to depict his lightsaber fighting style. I did a bit of research on all the fighting styles in Star Wars and decided that a combination of Darth Maul's and Cal Kestis's (when wielding a staff-saber) styles would work great for Shabu's style as well. The way I see him use the lightsaber is the follwing:

"Staff mode" when in the offensive;
"Double blade" (folded lightsaber) when in defensive because I feel having both blades on 1 side of the saber will help him deflect and block bullets better

For this illustration I used his offensive fighting style. I used references of martial arts and sword wielding.

Week 12

This week I worked on the Mon Calamari's personality pose. I still had a lot to figure out about this character, as up to this point my entire image about her was "she's a koi fish-inspired design". If I'm being completely honest, I made her an imperial just for the sake of variety and as to not have only "good guys" in my portfolio. With that in mind, I was set on researching the villains of Star Wars. I really wanted to sell her as one of the bad guys, while also maintaining her design and color scheme.

My main inspiration is Grand Admiral Thrawn. He is a knowledgeable military leader who originated from the Csilla system, home of the Chiss Ascendancy, and served in the Chiss Starfleet. He later served as a high-ranking officer within the Galactic Empire's naval forces, being personally promoted to the rank of Grand Admiral by Emperor Palpatine. He is known for his strategic intellect and tactical brilliance, as he believes that understanding an enemy's art, culture, history and philosophy is the key to victory. This is the type of personality I want my character to have as well.

First thing first, this character needed a name, something easy to remember, but still cool-sounding. After reviewing a bunch of naming conventions in Star Wars, as well as a couple of name generators, I came up with the name Na Letris.

Na Letris stands tall and proud, ready to wreak havoc on the galaxy. She is a powerful fleet commander and a force to be reckoned with, a master of manipulation and deception. Her large eyes are filled with hatred and cunning. She is a ruthless and dangerous villain, and will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Her home was abandoned by the republic when they needed their help the most, and so she wants nothing else but to destroy ever remaining bit of it to get her revenge. She will not settle for anything less than seeing any remaining survirors and rebels symphatizers suffer.

Week 13

Following Na Letris's personality work from last week, this week I worked on her expressions sheet. With these expressions I really wanted to emphasize her cold nature.

Week 14

To finish off this project, I created these "texture spheres" to showcase the textures used for the characters' fabrics. They go in the following order:

Ovasu Nolaa
Shazu Uwuba
Na Letris