RIP Ralph McQuarrie

Once upon a time, Ralph McQuarrie illustrated a coffee table art book written by Kevin J. Anderson called The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. McQuarrie, if you didn’t know, was one of the first conceptual artists for Star Wars. It was with his paintings that George Lucas was able to convince funders to invest in his movie. He passed away on Saturday. He painted a chapter for Coruscant in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, which hitherto had not been seen before anywhere else in Star Wars literature (except for renamed early concept art in some books for a planet called Had Abbadon for the then-titled Revenge of the Jedi). The planet’s name “Coruscant” had only been officially named by Timothy Zahn in his novel Heir To The Empire a couple of years earlier. [[image:mcquarrie-rip-01.jpg:Entertainment District, Coruscant:center:0]] One of his artwork in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe was a night scene of […]

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