Star Wars versus Aliens

January 3, 2013 at 12:10 pm | Posted in Art, Star Wars | 4 Comments
Tags: robert shane

Every now and then a piece of artwork catches your eye. These pieces from Robert Shane do just that. By combining two successful sci-fi franchises, he’s taken things to an interesting level. Who would win in a battle between George Lucas and Ridley Scott? Well, you can be the judge.

“Now that George Lucas has (sadly) decided to retire from movie directing, I’m expecting him to call me up to ask me to take over on the next Star Wars movie/tv series. My first pitch will be this… Darth Maul fighting Aliens! I thought it would be a very cool contest – and I also wanted to draw Darth Maul because of the interest in the 3D release of The Phantom Menace. The idea is that this was an initiation test that Darth Sidious set for Maul during his training. This took a lot of hard work – but I’m really, really pleased with how it turned out and I think it’s my best work yet! It’s an entirely original depiction of George Lucas’s and HR Giger’s characters and was drawn first in pencil, then scanned and coloured in Photoshop using a Wacom pad.” –Robert Shane

“I’m not the first to think up the idea of mashing Star Wars and Aliens together – but the two go together so well I had to draw another crossover. For this one – I thought up the idea of Darth Vader going to check out some unusual liferform readings in his Star Destroyer’s cargo hold… and finding an Alien queen.

The title for this has a double meaning. First because I think the two characters would be fairly evenly matched in a fight. Second – because of the parallels between the character design – both are shiny black evil monsters. So I’ve emphasised this in the composition and lighting. I also picked up on a few helpful comments about the ‘gritty’ feel of my last piece – so I kept a limited colour palette for this one too.

I’ve drawn Darth Vader attempting to use his ‘force choke’ on the Alien queen (would that work?). I did this intentionally because it’s an ambiguous pose. I wanted him to look like he might even be reaching out to the Alien – perhaps sensing a kindred spirit. I thought that added something to this as a piece of ‘art’ that would be lost if this was just another battle scene.

This is an original depiction of George Lucas’s and HR Giger’s characters. My initial sketch for this was drawn on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 using the bundled Photoshop Touch. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the digitizer pen is – and the fact that you can export PSD files to complete your work is great too. I finished the piece in Photoshop using a Wacom pad. I used Google Sketchup to build a 3D wireframe for the background which I then imported to Photoshop to colour.

I’m really, really pleased with this. Hope you like it too!” –Robert Shane

“This took me a really long time to draw… I thought I’d never get it done! This is a ‘companion’ piece to my drawing of Darth Vader meeting an Alien queen. Perhaps this battle is what happened on board Vader’s Star Destroyer immediately before he turned up to restore order!? I wanted this piece to look claustrophobic and chaotic – to give a sense of the mayhem that’s taking place – without resorting to drawing blood and guts everywhere! So I only depicted the characters in the picture… no background… no scenery. I didn’t want this to be one of those pieces where the center of the page is full detail while the edges are blurry or lacking in detail. There’s nothing wrong with that approach – in fact it’s the ‘right’ way to compose a piece that directs the viewer’s eye. But for this one – I just wanted the page to be full – so that wherever you look – there’s something happening. My other Star Wars / Alien mash-up featured Darth Maul – so now I have a trilogy! I think that after all the time and effort this one took – it will probably be my last! (At least for a while.)” –Robert Shane

You can check out more of Robert Shane’s artwork on his DeviantArt page.

Posted By: Skuldren for Roqoo Depot.