I thought I'd use my posts here at the Artist Multi-Blog to spotlight some of the Star Wars artists that influenced me when I was just a player in the fan art world. I'm omitting any artists I now consider my peers among the "Lucasfilm-approved" artists, although there are certainly many people in that group that I admire and who continue to influence me and my work.

The second artist I want to talk about has, to my knowledge, only worked on one Star Wars project ever, the comic adaption of Timothy Zahn's Heir To The Empire. His name is . . .

Olivier Vatine

Olivier's pencil work on the Dark Horse adaption of Book One of the Thrawn Trilogy stands out as some of the most beautiful Star Wars comic book illustartion ever to hit the comic shops. The only downside of his work on the project is that he did not work on the other two adaptions of the other two novels in the series.

Mr. Vatine's work was some of the imagery that inspired me when I was just getting back into reading comics and drawing after a long absence from either pursuit. I loved the way he blended his somewhat "cartoony" characters with wonderfully detailed backgrounds, and I have worked to do the same in some of my own illustrations ever since then.

Taking a look through his website's gallery, one can see what I'm talking about. Like I said, I only wish he had done the entire series of adaptions. Oh well.

For those who have never seen the Heir To The Empire Adaption, you can buy it online here.

Thanks for reading.

-Otis

Previous Artistic Influences . . .

1 Cynthia Martin