Check out the brand new feature article over at StarWars.com on the creation of the new Sith Circus movie poster! Lucasfilm content developer, Pete Vilmur, details the production of the poster from initial concept to printed piece . . . even mentions my involvement near the end of the article with a very flattering paragraph . . . you can click on the link at the opening page of StarWars.com or visit: http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/misc/news20070926.html

Enjoy!

-pmk

I am very happy to announce that I am working with a new publisher on a number of different and exciting projects. This November, Eisner Award nominee Classic Comics Press will release Dondi, by acclaimed creators Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen. Hasen is heavily involved in the process of creating this special project and I am lucky enough to be the one designing the book!

From Wikapedia: Dondi was a daily comic strip about a large-eyed, Italian war orphan of the same name. It was created by Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen, and ran from September 25, 1955 until June 8, 1986. Irwin Hasen received the National Cartoonist Society Award for Story Comic Strip for 1961 and 1962 for his work on the strip. During these years, the strip was carried in hundreds of newspapers. By the time the strip ended, it was only being carried in 35 papers.

Dondi's backstory describes him as a five year old, World War II war orphan of Italian descent. A soldier who was to be his future adoptive father (and who knew no Italian) found the child wandering in a war-torn village repeating the word "Donde" ("where") as he was looking for his slain parents. Like other little boy characters such as Dennis The Menace Dondi's character never aged. This became problematic as the years since World War II passed and his origin story became more and more implausible. Eventually, references to his Italian origin ceased to be mentioned and he was adopted by the Uncle Ted character. Following this, he was portrayed simply as an adopted child.

After the death of Gus Edson, Bob Oksner teamed up with surviving founder Hasen and the two remained with the strip until its end in 1986.

This is only the first of many projects I'll be working on with Classic Comics Press and I look forward to many more of these announcements!

So now the announcement has been made and I can officially post the final "Sith Circus" artwork. This officially licensed Lucasfilm, LTD. poster, painted by good friend and fan-favorite Star Wars artist, Matt Busch features type design by me! I did every letter of type you see on this baby! In fact, if you look in the lower right hand corner of the image, you'll see the PMK' Imagination logo! Immortalized in the Star Wars mythos for all eternity . . . er, ok . . . well, that might be a bit too much, but hey . . . this is a dream come true! Not only did I do all the type, but I also did some very cool pre-press and some digital touch-ups to the artwork, including recreating General Grievous's lightsaber blade using Photoshop CS2!

Our poster pictured on the left with original1978 poster on the right.

This is a huge 27 x 40, limited edition one-sheet that will only be available through StarWarsShop.com. The first 500 Hyperspace members (that's the official Star Wars online fan club) who purchase the Sith Circus one-sheet, get a free concept sketch of the artwork, which exhibits some of the ideas that were consideredearly on. Even this sketch poster features my typography . . . it's a very cool look at how the process began and sure to be a huge collector's item!

And for the actual, Lucasfilm is having Matt sign 15% of the print run . . . all very exciting . . . You can even order both the "Sith Circus" and the original "Style D" poster together, so you can display them side by side! Order them now before they sell out!

I want to send a special shout out to Matt Busch, who brought me on this project and fulfilled a life long dream of mine. To work on this poster with Matt is what I consider to be the height of my career thus far . . . it's going to be very hard to top this, my friend . . . all thanks to you!

Here's a quick tease about my newest - and by far most exciting - collaboration to date. Check out page 81 of the new Star Wars Insider 96. On it, you'll get a sneak peek at the exclusive "Sith Circus" movie poster. It was illustrated and painted by popular Star Wars artist, Matt Busch, with art direction by Lucasfilm's very own Pete Vilmur (co-author of The Star Wars Poster Book), and featuring type design by yours truly! There will be more details to follow, but the poster is to be sold exclusively though StarWarsShop.com. To say this project was a dream come true is a massive understatement. What is pictured is an earlier version and the final image will be released very soon, so stay tuned! 



Larger image here! 

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a total Star Wars nut . . . well, not as crazy as some of the folks out there, but I really admire and respect what George Lucas has done . . . Anyway, I am lucky enough to work with Matt Busch, official Lucasfilm artist and long time friend of mine. His work is featured in the new DK Publishing book You Can Draw Star Wars. The book is doing so well that Matt has been asked to write and direct a series of video tutorials that showcase how he actually draws Star Wars. There are four episodes out now and they are a fantastic tool for artists looking to see how Matt works . . . and for fans, well, Matt is a fan, obviously, and the tutorials chock full of fun little Star Wars tributes.

So my involvement comes in during Episode III and a great little lightsaber gag that runs throughout the movie. Matt asked me if I could animate a sequence of lightsaber moves . . . having done it only once as a challenge to myself, I jumped at the chance to not only do it for an official Lucasfilm project, but to also push myself as a graphic designer. Together, Matt and I fine tuned the effects and you can now see the finished film here.

Below, you'll see a before and after frame . . . footageA.mov is the actual shot while Matt_lightsaber.mov is what it looks like after I got my eager hands on it . . . I used Photoshop to paint on 618 frames for a 20-second clip - and now I know why these movies take so long to make! After each frame was painted, they were stitched together using Adobe Premier Elements. This was a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed helping create it . . .

Thanks for reading!

-pmk

After two years in the making, Nevermore: Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe is finally available for purchase. Follow this link to the purchase page and make sure you're one of the first 35 people to purchase the book as you'll get a special treat! 

Nevermore: Selected Stories from Edgar Allan Poe features several of Poe's chilling works with accompaning artwork by some of today's brightest talents.

Featured artists include:

• Norm Breyfogle
• Matt Busch
• Mike Grell
• Andy Lee
• Mark Pennington
• Chris Ring
• Mark Yanko and more!