Winner Of Star Wars Pullout Poster

"The plan was to create a single poster with 30 memorable characters from Star Wars to commemorate the 30th anniversary. I worked on it with another designer.

"However for the single poster, I needed to illustrate 30 characters individually, from the six episodes of Star Wars

"As the plan developed, it was decided that the individual drawings could be published separately, too.

"The designer did the layout, we hired a Star Wars expert from Mexico to supply the fact files, and I created the illustrations.

"It took me two-and-a-half months. The longest I spent was 16 hours on the poster of Queen Amidala/Padme, as it had two faces. As the need was realism, I had to be very careful with the proportions and details. I created each one using pastels on 50 by 60 centimetre foam boards.

"The reason I used pastels was because that was the medium used to create all the original movie posters for Star Wars. So I was carrying the tradition forward.

"I was happy and glad to be part of the project � it was a creatively inspiring process. I started specialising as an illustrator after joining Gulf News two years ago."

March 19, 2008